"Throw what away?" faltered Rona in surprise, and then in an instant realized what he had found. And again she blushed--blushed furiously--the stain of her former emotion having hardly faded from her cheeks. She turned away her head to hide the mingled feeling in her face. She was desperately hurt, she was ashamed, she was indignant ... she was something else too. What was it? She knew not. There was no name for the strange force which shook her, as she managed to reply. "Certainly not. Put it back where you found it." There was a suggestion of his having pried unwarrantably into her purse's secret compartment. "Let me give it to one of the children in the village," he said, in a low voice, urgently. "As long as you keep it you are acting a lie; you are acknowledging my claim. If I throw it away you are free." She managed to speak at last. "I do acknowledge your claim. It is you who have renounced me. Denzil said there could be nothing binding between us until you and he had met--face to face." She spoke with difficulty, with anguish, with a curious intensity. "It is you who will not listen," she said, "who have settled that we are to be ... as we are. I am perfectly miserable." She stopped abruptly. If she died for it, Felix should not see her cry. He knelt before her, the broken coin in his hand. "I am a brute," he said. "Oh, what a brute I am! And you are in pain! Forgive me!" He hastily replaced the little token, fastened her purse, and handed it to her. "Let me help you up," he said, stooping over her, with a voice most different from the hard, flippant tones he had used hitherto. She looked up bravely. "I am----" she began, but broke off. She was not feeling well enough to have things out with him. "Yes, I fear I must hold on to you," she admitted. She grasped his arm with both hands, and so drew herself slowly to her feet. "I can walk," she said firmly, "if I may hold on tight." "As tight as you like," he replied. "Shall I--might I--carry you?" "I don't think I could bear it," she replied, and then, seeing a double meaning in her own words, "I mean"--hastily--"that I have hurt myself, and could not bear to be touched." "I would touch you gently." "Yes," she answered, low. "I know you would. I remember that you did. I remember--very well." He answered absently, as they moved slowly along together. "How it all comes back!" He stopped, gazing round. "What is it, just here, that brings the wharf and the Thames, and everything, flashing back like a snap-shot on my mind?" They were standing just beside a rick of newly-cut steppe grass. "The scent of the hay," she whispered. With a touch of her hand she urged him on. He said no more. No further word passed his lips until they reached the rest-house. CHAPTER XXVII TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA All alone, thou and I, in the desert, In the land all forgotten of God. --HENRY KINGSLEY.