Just here there is a little rock-path to the south, going down to the water between rocks mixed with shrub-like little trees, three yards long: a path, or a lane, one might call it, for at the lower end the rocks and trees reach well over a tall man's head. There she had tied my boat to a slender linden-trunk: and sadder now than Gethsemane that familiar boat seemed to my eyes, for I knew very well that I should never enter it more. I walked up and down the path, awaiting her: and from the jacket-pocket in which lay the revolver I drew a box of Swedish matches, from it took two matches, and broke off a bit from the plain end of one; and the two I held between my left thumb and forefinger joint, the phosphorus ends level and visible, the other ends invisible: and I awaited her, pacing fast, and my brow was as stern as Azrael and Rhadamanthus. She came, very pale, poor thing, and flurried, breathing fast. And 'Leda,' I said, meeting her in the middle of the lane, and going straight to the point, 'we are to part, as you guess--for ever, as you guess--for I see very well by your face that you guess. I, too, am very sorry, my little child, and heavy is my heart. To leave you ... alone ... in the world ... is--death for me. But it must, ah it must, be done.' Her face suddenly turned as sallow as the dead were, when the shroud was already on, and the coffin had become a stale added piece of room-furniture by the bed-side; but in recording that fact, I record also this other: that, accompanying this mortal sallowness, which painfully shewed up her poor freckles, was a steady smile, a little turned-down: a smile of steady, of slightly disdainful--Confidence. She did not say anything: so I went on. 'I have thought long,' said I, 'and I have made a plan--a plan which cannot be effective without _your_ consent and co-operation: and the plan is this: we go from this place together--this same night--to some unknown spot, some town, say a hundred miles hence--by train. There I get two motors, and I in one, and you in the other, we separate, going different ways. We shall thus never be able, however much we may want to, to rediscover each other in all this wide world. That is my plan.' She looked me in the face, smiling her smile: and the answer was not long in coming. 'I will go in the tlain with you,' says she with slow decisiveness: 'but where you leave me, there I will stay, till I die; and I will patiently wait till my God convert you, and send you back to me.' 'That means that you refuse to do what I say?' 'Yes,' said she, bowing the head with great dignity. 'Well, you speak, not like a girl, Leda,' said I, 'but like a full woman now. But still, reflect a minute.... O reflect! If you stayed where I left you, I _should_ go back to you, and pretty soon, too: I know that I should. Tell me, then--reflect well, and tell me--do you definitely refuse to part with me?' The answer was pretty prompt, cool, and firm: 'Yes; I lefuse.'