"But I do," said the woman quite simply, as if it were a matter of course not only that she should love him, but that she should also tell him so. The man stared at her, amazed. Such fierce surges of joy throbbed through him as he had not thought the human frame could sustain. This woman loved him, in some strange way he had gained her affection. It was impossible, yet she had said so! He had been a blind fool. He could see that now. She stood before him and smiled up at him, looking at him through eyes misted with tears, with lips parted, with color coming and going in her cheek and with her bosom rising and falling. She loved him, he had but to step nearer to her to take her in his arms. There was trust, devotion, surrender, everything, in her attitude and between them, like that great gulf which lay between the rich man and the beggar, that separated heaven and hell, was that he could not cross. "I never dreamed, I never hoped--oh," he exclaimed as if he had got his death wound, "this cannot be borne." He turned away, but in two swift steps she caught him. "Where do you go?" "Out, out into the night." "You cannot go now, it is dark; hark to the storm, you will miss your footing; you would fall, you would freeze, you would die." "What matters that?" "I cannot have it." "It would be better so." He strove again to wrench himself away, but she would not be denied. She clung to him tenaciously. "I will not let you go unless you give me your word of honor that you will not leave the plateau, and that you will come back to me." "I tell you that the quicker and more surely I go out of your life, the happier and better it will be for you." "And I tell you," said the woman resolutely, "that you can never go out of my life again, living or dead," she released him with one hand and laid it upon her heart, "you are here." "Enid," cried the man. "No," she thrust him gently away with one hand yet detained him with the other--that was emblematic of the situation between them. "Not now, not yet, let me think, but promise me you will do yourself no harm, you will let nothing imperil your life." "As you will," said the man regretfully. "I had purposed to end it now and forever, but I promise." "Your word of honor?" "My word of honor." "And you won't break it?" "I never broke it to a human being, much less will I do so to you?" She released him. He went into the other room and she heard him cross the floor and open the door and go out into the night, into the storm again. CHAPTER XIX THE FACE IN THE LOCKET