His tone was so extraordinarily bitter, that she cried out joyfully, “Oh, then you do care a little? You speak of renunciation! Then I can speak. I was afraid to. I was beginning to think--that you had only--oh, how difficult it is to say these things!--that you had only--proposed--to me, because I had compromised myself by staying here with you so long. Out of pity, you know!” They had left the Broad Walk, and were wandering down a track in the undergrowth. He turned round to her, and his voice was quite different from the one he had been hitherto using. “You are quite wrong if you think that. On the contrary---- ” He stopped, and seemed embarrassed for the first time. “It was what I wanted--I said that I loved you--and I did. I do--only---- ” “Then--then--if you can say that---- ” She seized his hand, raised it to her lips, and kissed it. “Then let him--let my husband divorce me! I must say it! I can’t let myself drown without a word! Mortimer will have every excuse to divorce me, don’t you see? I have been living practically alone with you for a whole month! It looks bad enough--even old Mr. Popham saw it. I could not defend it--and I won’t! Mortimer will have to divorce me, and we will marry each other and be happy.... Why do you shake your head like that? No! But why not? You think my proposal dreadful! So it is, but I would do anything--anything in the world to come to you.” “And so would I for you--you must not doubt that!” he replied, and his slow deliberate tones in no wise expressed the emotion that, for her comfort, she could see in his eyes. He gave her back her hands, as it were. “Anything,”--he repeated gravely, “but a dishonourable thing! No, not even for you!... Look here! it is now half past eleven--you can only just do it! The trap will be there already! You shall leave me here.... Please--don’t make difficulties, my dear. It has to be. We have decided it, haven’t we? Good-bye ... good-bye!” She did not cry. She stood still and leant her head against the trunk of a huge beech tree, and felt her hair catch in its rough bark, and half closed her eyes in anticipation of a parting that would be worse to bear than a blow. Would he kiss her? He must, and yet she would not ask him. He did; he took her in his arms, and gratified her great love with a kiss more perfunctory than passionate, perhaps, and which yet awakened the woman’s heart in her body once and for all. Then he turned sharply on his heel and raised his hat--she smiled even in her misery at the irony of it, but she understood him now--and left her. She dared not watch him go, lest she fall into the crime of calling him back to her. He might hate her for that. She looked up into the branches of the tree overhead, till a sudden rush of tears mercifully blinded her!