‘Woman!’ he cried, ‘have you been sent from the devil to torture me and tempt me to forsake my duty? Leave this hallowed spot. Go back and wallow in the Slough of Despond from which I have been lifted. Are you mad to speak to me like this? What hellish design have you in your brain regarding me? Do you want to drag me down to the abyss with yourself? Go, and never come near me more! You have planted a sword in my breast that it will take weeks, perhaps months, to draw forth again. Go, go! Don’t let me curse you! Oh, God! have I not suffered enough without this? Is it Thy will to crucify me afresh? _Sancta Maria! Ora pro nobis!_’ And, with a look of agonised entreaty at the pictured face that hung above the mantelpiece, Frederick Walcheren crossed himself and fled from the college parlour, and Rhoda saw him no more. She was a little offended and very much hurt to have her overtures received in so ungracious a manner. She cried bitterly as she took her way back to Luton, but she told her mother nothing beyond the bare facts of the case. Fred was no longer the gay, _debonnair_ young man she had given her heart to. So much the easier, she told herself, to forget all about him. Still, as she dreamt over the past, she could not but believe that, some day, she and the father of her child would meet again. CHAPTER VIII. As soon as Frederick Walcheren had left Rhoda’s presence, he hurried to his private study and locked himself in. His interview with her had greatly disturbed him. For not only had it brought back the past in all its vividness, but made him conscious how dear that past had been to him--how dear it was still! He sat down by the table and buried his face in his clasped hands. How plainly he could see all that he had promised to relinquish. The racecourse and the cricket field, the regattas and the football matches, the private theatricals and the picnics. And then the midnight revelries. The theatres and music-halls and dances he had attended and enjoyed with all the zest of youth and health combined. Was it possible he should never, let him live to the age of a hundred, see them evermore?