She raised her eyes and they rested on his in a deep, exalted look. She was plighting her troth for life. He, too, was pale and moved, and the hands clasped round hers trembled. He cared for her with all the force that was in him. He was neither exaggerated nor untruthful in what he said. When he told a woman he loved her he meant it. There would have been no reason or pleasure to Jerry in making love unless the feeling he expressed was genuine. Now his voice was hoarse, his face tense with emotion, as he said: “It’s for life with me, too. There’s no woman in the world for me but you, June. Whatever I’ve done in the past, in the future I’m yours, for ever, while I’m here to be anybody’s. Will you be true?” “Till I die,” she whispered. Their trembling hands remained locked together, and eye held eye in a trance-like steadiness that seemed to search the soul. To both, the moment had the sacredness of a betrothal. “Some day perhaps we can be happy,” he murmured, not knowing what he meant, but anxious to alleviate the very genuine suffering he experienced. She framed some low words over which her lips quivered, and in his pain he insisted: “But you will wait for me, no matter what time passes? You won’t grow tired of waiting, or cease to care? You’ll always feel that you’re mine?” “I’m yours for ever,” she answered. These were the only words of love that passed between them, but at the time they were uttered they were to both as the words of a solemn pact. For the rest of the winter Jerry avoided her. His passion was at its height. Between it and his fear of Lupé he was more wretched and unhappy than he had ever been in his life. During the spring, with its tumult of excitement and final catastrophe, and the long summer of dreary recuperation, June walked apart, upheld by the memory of the vows she had plighted. Money was made and lost, the little world about her seethed in angry discouragement while she looked on absently, absorbed in her dream. What delighted or vexed people was of insignificant moment to her. In the midst of surroundings to which she had once given a sparkling and intimate attention she was now a cool, indifferent spectator. Her interest in life was concentrated in the thought that Jerry had pledged himself to her. CHAPTER VIII NEW PLANETS The year after the Crown Point collapse was a sad and chastened one. Money was tight on all sides. Large houses were closed, servants discharged, dressmakers’ bills cut down. Many families hitherto prominent dropped out of sight, preferring to hide their poverty in remote corners of the city, whence, in some cases, they never again emerged. The winter, shorn of its accustomed gaieties, was dull and quiet.