Cecil Tresilyan rose and laid her hand on his arm, her beautiful face fixed in its firm resolve like that of one of those fair Norse Valas, from whose rigid lips flowed the bode of defeat or victory, when the Vikings went forth to the Feast of the Ravens. "I am not angry with one word you have said to-night; you have only expressed what my own cowardly conscience ought to have uttered; nevertheless, to-morrow sees our last meeting. All your account against me is fairly balanced now. I do not know what I may have to suffer, but I do know that I _will_ be alone till I die. Perhaps some day I may thank you in my thoughts for what you have done; I can not--now." With a heavy heart Waring owned to himself that her words were bitterly true. In curing such diseases, the physician must work without hope of reward or fee; it will be long before the patient can touch without a shudder the hand that inflicted the saving cautery. Her tone changed, and she went on murmuring, low and plaintively, as if in soliloquy and unconscious of another's presence. "I could not help loving him, though I knew it was sin; if there is shame in confessing it, I can not feel it yet. I wish I had told him--_once_--how dearly I loved him; I shall never be able to whisper it to him now, and I dare not write it. No, he will not forget me as he has forgotten others; but he will hate me, and call me false, and fickle, and cold. Cold--if he could only read my heart! I never read it myself till now, when we must be parted forever." Is it pleasant, think you, to listen to such words as these, uttered by the woman that you have worshiped, even if it be hopelessly, for years? Men have gone mad under lighter tortures than those that Mark Waring was then forced to endure. But he knew that it was the extremity of her anguish that had hardened for a season Cecil's gentle, generous, nature, and made her heedless of the pain she inflicted. So he answered in a slow, steady voice, such as we employ when trying to calm the ravings of a fever-fit: "Hush! you speak wildly. My presence here does you no good. You may think of me as hardly as you will; perhaps time will soften your judgment; if not--I shall still not repent to-night's work. I will come for your letter at the moment of your departure. Good-night; I pray that God may help you now, and guard you always." He raised her hand and just touched it with his lips, with the same grave courtesy that had marked his manner when they parted last, three years ago, and in another second Cecil was alone again.