"Are there no means by which we may forget that cloud and return to the past?" he resumed; his voice hoarse with its emotion, and so low in tone that she could scarcely hear it. "Better to sacrifice a little prejudice than to pass a whole life in dissatisfied pain. Let the dishonour--pardon me for thus alluding to it--rest with the dead: perhaps it has been wrong from the first to make it our sorrow." She looked at him, not quite understanding. He saw the doubt. "Be my wife, Sara. I can then take these troubles upon me as my legal right. On my sacred word of honour, I will never cast a reproach to the past, so much as in thought. No! I will not let your hands go until you tell me by word of mouth what I _know_--that your heart is mine still; that we _cannot_ be faithless one to the other." She felt faint with the moment's pain. The dewdrops of emotion were gathering on her face, and he would not loose her hands that she might wipe them away. "If we never were true to each other, let us be so now," he went on. "It is too solemn a moment for equivocation: it is no time for us to pretend ignorance of our mutual love." It was indeed no time for equivocation or for doubt. Sara rose superior to it. A reticence that might have been observed at another time was forgotten now in her emotion and pain. "I have not been faithless: perhaps I never shall be. But we can never be more to each other than we are now. The dishonour clings to me, and always will cling." "Sara! don't I say that I will forget it?" "No; I would never bring the possibility of--of--of--I think you do not understand," she broke off, lifting her white face to his. "It was not only dishonour." "What else?" "Crime." A change passed over his countenance as he raised his head, which had been bent to catch the word. Soon it brightened again. Never perhaps had his besetting sin been so quiescent: but pride, even such pride as Oswald Cray's, is a less strong passion than love. "It was not _your_ crime, Sara. And it has passed away." "It has not passed." "Not passed!" "Not yet. There's danger still." Oswald bit his lip. "Danger of what?" "Of--of--exposure," she faintly said. "Do not force me to say more. Only believe one thing--that I can never be your wife. Do you think if there were no insuperable barrier that _I_ should have made one?" she added, her face flushing a hot crimson. "Forgive me: I scarcely know what I say: but you wished that we should speak without reserve." "Sara, let me fully understand. Do you imply that there exists any good and substantial reason _still_, call it insuperable barrier if you will, why you ought not to become my wife? Wait a moment. Before you give an answer remember that to my heart it is fraught with either life or death." "I do not imply it; I fully state it. Oh, don't visit it upon me!" she exclaimed, as his face seemed to be assuming its old haughtiness. "It is not my fault. I did not work the disgrace."