“And do you suppose that I will receive you then? Return to me _now_--show, even at the eleventh hour, that you can trust me--I will send in my papers and stay at home. I have interest, and it is not yet too late. I will freely forgive and forget all you thought, all you said. It shall be as though it had never been spoken.” He paused, and looked at her eagerly. “I told you,” he proceeded still more earnestly, “that I had done with you, that I had no desire to see you again, but I found, on cool reflection, that I loved you far too dearly to give you up without an effort at reconciliation. I have made _two_--once in London and once now--but this, I declare to you solemnly, will be the last. Come back to me, and trust me, my dearest,” he said, laying his hand entreatingly on her arm. “Trust me only for a little time; all will, all must come right. You will never again in all your life have such an opportunity of showing your love, your confidence in me. Do you think I would not stand by you in a similar case? You know I would,” he added emphatically. “Come back to me, Alice,” he urged. “No, I will not,” she replied doggedly leaning both elbows on the railing of the pier and staring steadily out to sea. “You will not?” he repeated, in a tone of bitter disappointment. “You cannot mean it.” After an inward struggle with himself he continued as before: “Think of what you are doing, Alice. You have broken up our home and turned me adrift--taken your freedom and your own way. You are sending me back to India, and God knows if I shall ever return.” “You need not go,” she replied in a low voice, still looking out to sea, as if addressing the ocean. “Of course I must go!” he cried emphatically; “unless you wish to have the open mouth of scandal busy with our names. If the world knows that I am engaged in my country’s service it may leave you alone. But I warn you that society looks coldly on a young and pretty woman living apart from her husband, and rightly or wrongly, they almost always throw the blame of the separation on _her_ shoulders. I know you have been influenced by Miss Fane; I know you have. It was not my generous, true-hearted Alice that spoke to me that night at Looton. You don’t know how you pained me, how you nearly maddened me by some of the things she put into your mouth--things my pure-minded girl-wife would never have thought of herself. You could not seriously think that I had another wife living, and that I had dared, nevertheless, to marry you--an _orphan_, as you justly remarked, committed to my care! Think of the shameful crime it would be! Look me full in the face, and tell me candidly, truthfully, and of your own free will, whether you imagine that I, Reginald Fairfax, could be guilty of such a thing?” Alice turned round at once and confronted him--his face pale with emotion. His dark, miserable eyes haunted her painfully afterwards for many and many a day.