She put her hands on his shoulders. For a moment, she clung to him, her face closely looking into his as though she must store him in her memory for the rest of time. He shut his eyes. He dared not kiss her. When the lips touch, they break a barrier through which floods a torrent there is no quenching. John shut his eyes and held back his head, lest the touching of her hair or the warmth of her breath should weaken his resolve. "How am I to do it?" she whispered. "I feel as though I must stay now; as though I never wanted to go back home again." He said nothing. The very tone of his voice would have been persuasion to her then. Slowly, she unclasped her fingers; as slowly she drew herself away. That was the last moment when he could have won her. Then she was his as the blood was rushing through him, as her pulses were throbbing wildly in time to his. But in love--it may be different in war--these things may not be taken so. Some vague, some mystical notion of the good does not permit of it. "You must be going," said John gently. "We can’t stay here." She let him lead her to the door. As it came open to his hand and the greater light flooded in, he knew that it was all finished. She stepped down into her gondola that was waiting, and the gondolier pushed off from the steps. Until it swayed out of sight, John stood motionless on the fondamenta, watching its passing. Sometimes Jill looked back over her shoulder and waved a little handkerchief. John bent his head acknowledging it. But neither of them saw the two white heads that, close together in a window up above, were whispering to each other in happy ignorance of all the misery which that little white handkerchief conveyed. "You see how long they took to get down the steps," whispered the old lady. "Oh, I don’t know that you can judge anything by that," replied her husband. "Those steps are very dark to anyone not accustomed to them." She took his arm. She looked up into his face. Her brown eyes twinkled. "They are," she whispered back--"very dark--nearly as dark as that little avenue up to the house where I lived when you first met me." CHAPTER XXXIII THE SIXTEENTH OF FEBRUARY--LONDON The abhorrence of Nature for a vacuum, is nothing to her abomination of unfinished work. In the great Tapestry which Time sits eternally weaving with the coloured threads of circumstance, there are no loose ends allowed. Every little picture which finds its way into the mighty subject of that vast material, must be complete in its symbol of accomplished Destiny. No ragged edges must there be; no lines unfinished, no shadow left out. And even, in so inconsequent a matter as a story of Beautiful Nonsense, some definite completion must be shown to round the whole, to leave no hanging thread by which the picture might be unravelled.