"I'm glad to see you are convinced that I mean what I have said," he announced, speaking in a cold, balanced way that Nancy knew of old, and recognized now as sounding the knell of her hopes. "Unless I am mistaken, the canoe is putting off from the hotel. It will be here in twenty minutes. You have just five minutes to make up your mind, and to write a farewell message to Power. I don't care what you say to him, so long as the break is final. You are going with me to Newport, and straight from there to London, where Marten will join us in response to a cablegram from me, telling him that you are ill. You had better stop crying. Nothing that you can say or do, short of loading that gun again and blowing a hole in me, will change either my purpose or my terms. I'll keep my word with regard to Power if you keep yours where Marten is concerned. He must never know. He must never see any change in you. The moment he casts you off because of Power, and I am still alive, you sign Power's death-warrant." Nancy rose. She was deathly white, and the tears still coursed silently down her cheeks; but despair had benumbed her emotions, and she spoke calmly. "You are sentencing me to death," she said. "Am I? Then Power dies, too," he cried. "No. That is not in the bond. You stipulate that I shall return to Marten as his wife, and that I am not to take my own life. But if my heart breaks, and I die, you will have glutted your bitter malice already, and Derry, too, must not provide you with a victim." "People don't die of broken hearts." "Every woman who has loved will think differently. But you have some notion of what is meant by honor, I suppose? I demand your promise that if I accompany you now, and go back to Marten, and never attempt to meet Derry again--though that would be quite impossible, either for him or for me--you withdraw your threat, and leave him in peace during the remainder of your life." "I'm not here to receive terms, but to state them." "Then he and I will fall together beneath your bullets. Before you shoot him, you will have to shoot me." "Very well, then. I agree. I don't want to kill my own daughter." "You have done that already. You have slain her soul, and her poor body is of slight importance. Ah, may Heaven forgive me if I am not choosing aright! Derry, my own dear love, you must never know that I am doing this for your sake, or it will not be the wretch whom once I called father who becomes judge and jury and executioner in my behalf!" Willard, still turned toward the lake, heard her drop on her knees again beside the table. She wrote a few words, very few; for her dazed brain was incapable now of framing other than the simplest sentences. Then she sealed the envelop, and kissed it, and went out. Brushing the tears from her eyes, she gave one long look across the shimmering water, and saw a black dot which she knew was the canoe heading straight for the cabin.