“God’s Will!” he said. “When we go home to that great Dwelling Place, our holy passion is to do His Will. All earthly things—loves, hopes, desires—assume their right proportions. The one Essential is the great Will of God—that He in us, by us, through us, may in all things be glorified. All, in our earthly lives, which made for this, abides, and is ours still. All else is dross and cannot stand the fire—that purity of motive which is the very birthright of each immortal soul set free from earthly trammels of the flesh. To know His will and do it—this is Life Eternal; this is the joy supreme.” His arms dropped. The light faded from his countenance. “I left it, at the call of earthly love. I stand before you empty, godless, damned.” “Nigel,” she said; “my heart is broken.” “I would I had a heart to break,” he said. The despair in her face left him cold. Yet still her faithful love caught at a straw of comfort. “At least we are together in our misery.” “I am going,” he said. “Nigel! You will not leave me?” “How can I stay? A year younger than your own daughter, I cannot stand in my rightful place—nor would I, if I could.” “Nigel, stay as my son.” “How can I? I am not your son, and I will not be a rich woman’s protégé. I may have no capacity for love, but I have honour. I shall go, as I came, empty and alone. I will take nothing with me from this great house which you tell me is, in reality, my own.” “Nigel, there is one thing you _must_ take with you. It was your tenderest gift to me. It has been so precious all these years; but now I have forfeited the right to wear it.” She drew her wedding-ring from her finger. “I have failed you, utterly.” She held it out to him. “The golden circlet, emblem of a love which is eternal, would mock me in my hopeless desolation. Take it, Nigel. It is all you can do for me. When you placed it on my finger, you had just said: ‘Till death us do part’; and death has parted us.” “Not death,” he said. “Life has parted us, not death.” A heavy sense of sorrow and compunction gripped him. “Why do you ask me to do this? It leaves you neither wife nor widow.” “I _am_ neither wife nor widow. I am not your widow, for you live. I am not your wife, for you loathe me, and are leaving me forever.” “I do not loathe you,” he said, in low, remorseful tones. “But you have shewn me what I was; and you have made me what I am.” A spasm of deathly agony wrung her heart. Could he not spare her one cruel stab? She pressed the ring upon him. “Take it, I implore you. And if ever the remembrance returns of all that this ring once meant to us, come back to me, and place it again upon my hand.” He took it. For what had it stood when last he held it in his hand? The complete possession of a perfect love? He slipped it on to his little finger. His gnawing misery grew. Why could he not say one word of kindness or of comfort to this stricken woman whose faithful heart was breaking?