The sudden simple question revealed him to himself. Put in plain English, his rigmarole meant, "Go your way and I'll go mine." What he had said might be right--might be best--might be duty--might be religion--might be anything you would. But a man may forfeit the right to do right. "Of you?" he stammered. "I can't live as I am," she said. He began to pace up and down the room. She sat almost listlessly in her chair. There was an air of helplessness about her. But she was slowly thinking over what he had said and realising its purport. "You mean we're never to meet again?" she asked. "Not that!" he cried, with a sudden heat that amazed himself. "Not that, Maggie. Why that?" "Why that?" she repeated in wondering tones. "What else do you mean? You don't mean we should go on like this?" He did not dare to answer either way. The one was now impossible--had swiftly, as he looked at her, come to seem impossible; the other was to treat her as not even he could treat her. She was not of the stuff to live a life like that. There was silence while he waged with himself that strange preposterous struggle, where evil seemed good, and good a treachery not to be committed; wherein his brain seemed to invite to meanness, and his passion, for once, to point the better way. "I wish to God we had never----" he began; but her despairing eyes stifled the feeble useless sentence on his lips. At last he came near to her; the lines were deep on his forehead, and his mouth quivered under a forced smile. He laid his hand on her shoulder. She looked up questioningly. "You know what you're asking?" he said. She nodded her head. "Then so be it," said he; and he went again and leant against the mantelpiece. He felt that he had paid a debt with his life, but knew not whether the payment were too high. It seemed to him long before she spoke--long enough for him to repeat again to himself what he had done--how that he, of all men, had made a burden that would break his shoulders, and had fettered his limbs for all his life's race--yet to be glad, too, that he had not shrunk from carrying what he had made, and had escaped coupling the craven with his other part. "What do you mean?" she asked at last; and there was surprise in her tone. "It shall be as you wish," he answered. "We'll go through with it together." Though he was giving what she asked, she seemed hardly to understand. "I can't let you go," he said; "and I suppose you can't let me go." "But--but what'll happen?" "God knows," said he. "We shall be a long way off, anyhow." "In Omofaga, Willie?" "Yes." After a pause she rose and moved a step towards him. "Why are you doing it?" she asked, searching his eyes with hers. "Is it just because I ask? Because you're sorry for me?" She was standing near him, and he looked on her face. Then he sprang forward, catching her hands. "It's because you're more to me than I ever thought any woman could be." She let her hands lie in his.