"Only Dorian. Don't trouble yourself about Clarissa," he says, with an unpleasant laugh: "that game is played out. No, Dorian, alone, I went to see." He shades his face with his hand, and then goes on: "There are few like him in the world. In spite of all that has come and gone, he received me kindly, and has given me what will enable me to commence life afresh in a foreign land." There is remorse and deep admiration in his tone. But Ruth makes no reply: she cannot. Those last words, "a foreign land," have struck like a dying knell upon her heart. She watches him in despairing silence, as he walks restlessly up and down the room in the uncertain twilight. Presently he stops close to her. "I suppose there is some orthodox way of breaking bad news," he says, "but I never learned it. Ruth, your father is dead." The girl shrinks back, and puts her hand to her forehead in a dazed, pitiful fashion. "Not dead!" she says, imploringly, as though her contrition could bring him back to life. "Not altogether gone beyond recall. Sick, perhaps,--nay, dying,--but not dead!" "Yes, he is dead," says Horace, though more gently. "He died a week ago." A terrible silence falls upon the room. Presently, alarmed at her unnatural calm, he lays his hand upon her shoulder to rouse her. "There is no use in fretting over what cannot be recalled," he says, quickly, though still in his gentler tone. "And there are other things I must speak to you about to-night. My remaining time in this country is short, and I want you to understand the arrangements I have made for your comfort before leaving you." "You will leave me?" cries she, sharply. A dagger seems to have reached and pierced her heart. Falling upon her knees before him, she clasps him, and whispers, in a voice that has grown feeble through the intensity of her emotion, "Horace, do not forsake me. Think of all the past, and do not let the end be separation. What can I do? Where can I go?--with no home, no aim in life! Have pity! My father is dead; my friends, too, are dead to me. In all this wide miserable world I have only you!" "Only me!" he echoes, with a short bitter laugh. "A prize, surely. You don't know what folly you are talking. I give you a chance of escape from me,--an honorable chance, where a new home and new friends await you." "I want no friends, no home." (She is still clinging to his knees, with her white earnest face uplifted to his.) "Let me be your slave,--anything; but do not part from me. I cannot live without you now. It is only death you offer me." "Remember my temper," he says, warningly. "Only last night I struck you. Think of that. I shall probably strike you again. Be advised in time, and forsake me, like all the others."