"You have your profession to attend to," she said. "You do not know your own mind. You are changeful as a girl." "How can I go--with you here?" he exclaimed, vehemently. She turned her head away. He was looking at her with burning eyes. "Iver," she said, "I pray you be more loving to your mother. You have made her heart ache. It is cruel not to do all you can now to make amends to her for the past. She thinks that you do not love her. She is failing in health, and you must not drip drops of fresh sorrow into her heart during her last years." Iver made a motion of impatience. "I love my mother. Of course I love her." "Not as truly as you should, Iver," answered Mehetabel. "You do not consider the long ache--" "And I, had not I a long ache when away from home?" "You had your art to sustain you. She had but one thought--and that of you." "She has done me a cruel wrong," said he, irritably. "She has never done anything to you but good, and out of love," answered the girl vehemently. "To me; that is not it." Mehetabel raised her eyes and looked at him. He was gazing moodily at the fire. "She has stabbed me through you," exclaimed Iver, with a sudden outburst of passion. "Why do you plead my mother's cause, when it was she--I know it was she, and none but she--who thrust you into this hateful, this accursed marriage." "No, Iver, no!" cried Mehetabel in alarm. "Do not say this. Iver! talk of something else." "Of what?" "Of anything." "Very well," said he, relapsing into his dissatisfied mood. "You asked me once what my dream had been, that I dreamt that first night under your roof. I will tell you this now. I thought that you and I had been married, not you and Jonas, you and I, as it should have been. And I thought that I looked at you, and your face was deadly pale, and the hand I held was clay cold." A chill ran through Mehetabel's veins. She said, "There is some truth in it, Iver. You hold a dead girl by the hand. To you, I am, I must be, forever--dead." "Nonsense. All will come right somehow." "Yes, Iver," she said; "it will so. You are free and will go about, and will see and love and marry a girl worthy of you in every way. As for me, my lot is cast in the Punch-Bowl. No power on earth can separate me from Bideabout. I have made my bed and must lie on it, though it be one of thorns. There is but one thing for us both--we must part and meet no more." "Matabel," he put forth his hand in protest. "I have spoken plainly," she said, "because there is no good in not doing so. Do not make my part more difficult. Be a man--go." "Matabel! It shall not be, it cannot be! My love! My only one." He tried to grasp her. She sprang from the settle. A mist formed before her eyes. She groped for something by which to stay herself. He seized her by the waist. She wrenched herself free. "Let me go!" she cried. "Let me go!"