He said nothing about risking her happiness. It might not have occurred to him that he was asking her to risk the ruin of her young life on the chance of saving his friend. Still, he did not look her in the face. 'How can I answer him?' Lucy said, wringing her hands. 'You can only answer him as your heart dictates,' he said huskily. 'Remember, in refusing him this last chance, you are snatching away a rope from the grasp of a drowning man.' Oh, what a coward he was: he could not look the girl in the face! 'Oh, this is horrible!' Lucy said, with a moan, and then she sat down on one of the high-backed chairs against the wall and began to cry. Her nerves were so shaken that tears came readily now. If there was one thing more than another that Eric Gwatkin hated, it was to see a woman cry. Pamela never cried. Perhaps these foolish tears showed him more than anything else the girl's weakness. He was dreadfully sorry for her; he was sorry and ashamed of his errand. How could he press this sacrifice upon such a little weak creature? 'I am such a poor thing!' Lucy moaned, wringing her hands. 'I should never be able to influence him. Oh, you don't know how weak I am!' Eric smiled sadly, and sighed. He knew exactly how weak she was; he would not have had a woman stronger. 'I am not like Pamela,' Lucy went on, with her little feeble moan. 'No,' he interrupted her hastily, 'thank God! You are not like Pamela.' Lucy looked at him with wonder, through her tears, not unmixed with reproof. 'If I were Pamela,' she said, with some dignity--'if I had a great soul, and were made on larger lines, like Pamela, I should give you a different answer.' 'I must tell you,' he said hastily, interrupting her--'I must tell you, before you give your answer--your final answer--that Edgell releases you from your engagement; that he reproaches himself for having ever asked you to risk your happiness in his keeping. He begs me to say that if you have any fears or misgivings, if you have no confidence in his resolution--if you doubt him or yourself--it would be better for you to give him up.' Lucy sighed. 'But if you can be so generous as to give him another chance, he will never, never, God helping him, betray your trust!' Lucy looked at him with a break in the dull misery in her face. Why hadn't he delivered this part of his message first? Why had he talked about snatching away a rope from a drowning man? 'I am very grateful to him,' Lucy said, in a small shaky voice; 'tell him I am very grateful to him. I do not deserve so much love. Ask him to forgive me if he can; I am such a poor thing. I have no courage--I cannot even be generous!' She broke quite down. She could not trust herself to say any more. She took her lover at his word. Eric Gwatkin gave her one more chance before he went away. 'Remember,' he said, 'it is his last hope of reform.' But Lucy only moaned, 'I am such a poor thing--I have no courage!'