"Well, you certainly show," she answered with a smile, "a remarkable disregard for all precedents and conventions. You ought to be already on your way to foreign parts with your guns and servants. It is Englishmen, is it not, who go always to the Rocky Mountains to shoot bears when their love affairs go wrong?" He was watching her closely, and he saw that she was less at her ease than she would have had him believe. He saw, too, or fancied that he saw, a softening in her face, a kindliness gleaming out of her lustrous eyes which suggested new things to him. "The Rocky Mountains," he said slowly, "mean despair. A man does not go so far whilst he has hope." She did not answer him; he gathered courage from her silence. "Perhaps," he said, "I might now have been on my way there but for a somewhat sanguine disposition--a very strong determination, and," he added more softly, "a very intense love." "It takes," she remarked, "a very great deal to discourage an Englishman." "Speaking for myself," he answered, "I defy discouragement; I am proof against it. I love you so dearly, Helène, that I simply decline to give you up; I warn you that I am not a lover to be shaken off." His voice was very tender; his words sounded to her simple but strong. He was so sure of himself and his love. Truly, she thought, for an Englishman this was no indifferent wooer; his confidence thrilled her; she felt her heart beat quickly under its sheath of drooping black lace and roses. "I am giving you," she said quietly, "no hope. Remember that; but I do not want you to go away." The hope which her tongue so steadfastly refused to speak he gathered from her eyes, her face, from that indefinable softening which seems to pervade at the moment of yielding a woman's very personality. He was wonderfully happy, although he had the wit to keep it to himself. "You need not fear," he whispered, "I shall not go away." Outside they heard the sound of Mr. Sabin's stick. She leaned over towards him. "I want you," she said, "to--kiss me." His heart gave a great leap, but he controlled himself. Intuitively he knew how much was permitted to him; he seemed to have even some faint perception of the cause for her strange request. He bent over and took her face for a moment between his hands; her lips touched his--she had kissed him! He stood away from her, breathless with the excitement of the moment. The perfume of her hair, the soft touch of her lips, the gentle movement with which she had thrust him away, these things were like the drinking of strong wine to him. Her own cheeks were scarlet; outside the sound of Mr. Sabin's stick grew more and more distinct; she smoothed her hair and laughed softly up at him. "At least," she murmured, "there is that to remember always." CHAPTER XXV A HANDFUL OF ASHES