Looking at her as she stands with upturned eyes, like some sweet prayerful saint or penitent Magdalen, drawn by a cunning hand that has been resolved three centuries back into elemental dust--dust that has stopped a bunghole perhaps, like Alexander's--Gerard's resolution breaks a little; not his resolution of parting from her--_that_ remains firm as ever--but his power of so parting with nonchalant coldness. "Child!" he cries, a little roughly, and yet with a half-groan, placing a hand heavily on each of her shoulders--"Child! why are you so pretty? If it was your nature to be deceitful and underhand, why could not you be ugly too? Your beauty is the one thing about you that I believe in, and it drives me distracted!" "And yet," she answers, with a melancholy smile, "you told me just now, very calmly, to go back to--to _him:_ you seemed to contemplate with great equanimity the prospect of seeing me and my _distracting beauty_" (with a bitter emphasis) "in another man's possession." "You are mistaken," he answers, with quick violence. "By God's help, I'll never see you again after to-night." Hearing that heavy sentence, her knees tremble beneath her a little; a momentary dimness comes over her eyes; voice, breath, and heart seem to suspend their functions. No word of protest, of lamentation, of entreaty, crosses her whitened lips. "What right have I to be with you?" he asks, indignantly--"I, who cannot see you without coveting you? What right have I to steal another man's wife, any more than his horse or his money?" "Let me go, then," she answers, with a low, moaning sigh--"since it must be so. You know what is right better than I do. Good-bye!" "Good-bye!" he answers, very shortly, and turns away his head sharply, that only the lake and the stars may see the distortion that the passion of that parting is working on his face. "Say you forgive me before I go!" says the tender, tremulous voice, that might unman a hero--might unsaint an anchorite--as she lingers yet a little minute beside him. "Why should I say what is not true?" he asks, turning round roughly upon her. "I don't forgive you, and never shall, either in this world or the next." "You must!" she says, sobbingly, the words coming a little wildly through a tempest of tears. "I cannot go unless you do; if I went now, I should remember you all my life as you are to-day; to-day would blot out all the happy hours we have been together!" For all answer he turns away from her, and buries his face in his hands. "Look at me kindly once again!" she says, calmness growing out of her strong emotion, putting up her two small hands and trying to draw his away from before his hidden face. "I may be very wicked; I suppose I am--as you say so--mean, underhand, deceitful; but yet, for the sake of what is gone, look at me kindly once again: that won't hurt you, as it is for the very last time!"