But at that she broke down utterly--betraying for the first time the flood and tempest of her agony at losing him and, while he strove to soothe her, imploring him not to put upon her this last trial of her strength. "I couldn't bear it, Roly!" she sobbed. "Roly, I couldn't bear it!" Overwrought by the cumulative effects of the past months, culminating in the sleepless agony of this last week and now in the unendurable torture of good-by, she became hysterical at his proposal; sobbed as if her reason were gone, shaking with dreadful spasms of emotion that terrified him lest she would be unable to retake her breath. His arms about her, and his loving pleadings, his earnest promises to withdraw what he had said, joined with the sheer weariness of her convulsive distress at last to relieve her. She passed into a still, exhausted state and thence--utterly alarming him by her deathly pallor and by the faintness of her voice--into imploring him in whispers into the last, worst folly of all their pitiable blunders. She could not be left, she implored him, with Gran--left alone with her, left in such circumstances. "No, no! Roly, no! Together, Roly; not alone, not alone!" And then she began to assure him of her happiness if she might just wait here. "You can always think of me and imagine me here: just waiting for you, and thinking of you and praying for you; and not lonely, not unhappy. I _promise_ not lonely; I promise, _promise_ not unhappy! You can't think of me like that if you leave me with Lady Burdon. You don't know _what_ may happen to me; how she may feel towards me or what I might imagine she felt and what I might not do. I _could_ not--I _could_ not!" Try to understand him that he suffered himself to be convinced against himself. So placed; so implored; so loved and so loving; so shackled by the train of blunders he had committed, a hundred times more wise, more strong a man than twelfth Baron Burdon would have given way as he gave way. This was their farewell, and not to rob its fleeting hours more he agreed, and turned with her to rehearse the plans for her comfort in his absence. The flat was taken for six months ahead. "Back in four! Now I bet you any money I'm back in four!" There was money banked for her. Finally he wrote and gave her two letters, one addressed to a Mr. Pemberton--"One of the best, old Pemberton"--the other to Gran. He began to say, "If anything happens to me," but went on: "If ever you get--you know--down on your luck--that kind of thing--or feel you'd like to make it known about us before I come back, just send those letters--just as they are; you needn't write or take them yourself. They explain everything, they ... oh, don't cry.... Audrey ... Audrey!" Within a few hours he was gone. Within four months they were building a cairn of stones above him to keep the jackals from his body. CHAPTER IV WHAT THE TOOO-FIRTY WINNER BROUGHT MRS. ERPS I