CHAPTER XLII COALS OF FIRE Ralph returned home by way of Calais and Dover, and on the following day he came face to face with Dorothy outside the lodge gates. He raised his hat and would have passed on, but she would not let him. "Surely we may be friends?" she said, extending her hand to him, and her eyes were pleading and pathetic. He stopped at once and smiled gravely. "I thought it was your wish that we should meet as strangers," he said. "Did I say that?" she questioned, and she turned away her eyes from him. "Something to that effect," he answered, still smiling, though he felt as if every reason for smiles had passed from him. "I have been expecting to see you for days past," she said, suddenly raising her eyes to his. "I have been from home," he answered. "In fact, I have been to Boulogne." "To Boulogne?" she asked, with a start, and the blood mounted in a torrent to her neck and face. "I went across to see your father," he said slowly. "Yes?" she questioned, and her face was set and tense. "He was obdurate. He said he would rather see you in your coffin." For a moment there was silence. Then she said-- "Was he very angry?" "I am sorry to say he was. He evidently dislikes me very much--a feeling which I fear is mutual." "I wonder you had the courage to ask him," she said at length. "I would dare anything for your sake," he replied, with averted eyes. "I would defy him if you were willing. And, indeed, I cannot see why he should be the arbiter of your fate and mine." "You must not forget that he is my father," she said quietly and deliberately. "But you defied him in the case of Lord Probus." "That was different. To have married Lord Probus would have been a sin. No, no. The cases are not parallel." "Then you are still of the same mind?" he questioned. "It would not be right," she said, after a long pause, "knowing father as I do, and knowing how keenly he feels all this." "Then it is right to spoil my life, to fling all its future in shadow?" "You will forget me," she said, with averted eyes. "Perhaps so," he answered a little bitterly; "time is a great healer, they say," and he raised his hat again and turned away. But her hand was laid on his arm in a moment. "Now you are angry with me," she said, her eyes filling. "But don't you see it is as hard for me as for you? Oh, it is harder, for you are so much stronger than I." "If we are to forget each other," he replied quietly and without looking at her, "we had better begin at once." "But surely we may be friends?" she questioned. "It is not a question of friendship," he answered, "but of forgetting, or of trying to forget." "But I don't want to forget," she said impulsively. "I could not if I tried. A woman never forgets. I want to remember you, to think of your courage, your--your----" "Folly," he interrupted. She looked at him with a startled expression in her eyes. "Is it folly to love?" she questioned.