As he spoke, a party of ladies strolled into the court, and he leaned back upon his cushioned seat to wait until they were gone again. They looked at the pictures, with one eye on him, dawdled up and down for five minutes, trying to assert their right to be there if they chose; and then, too uncomfortably conscious of being _de trop_, departed. After which the lovers were alone again for a little while. Mr. Yelverton resumed possession of Elizabeth's hand, and repeated his rather cruel question. "Didn't you know all along that it must come to this?" "A week ago I did not know what I know now," she replied. "Ah, my dear, you knew it in your heart, but you would not listen to your heart." He thought he understood it all, perfectly. He pictured her regret and hungry longing for him after he was gone, how she had fought against it for a time, and how it had precipitately driven her to Melbourne at last, and driven her to summon him in this importunate fashion to her side. It was exactly what he would have done, he thought, had he been in her place. "Mr. Yelverton--" She was beginning to speak seriously, but he stopped her. "No," he said, "I am not going to be called Mr. Yelverton by _you_. Never again, remember. My name is Kingscote, if you wish to know. My people at home, when I had any people, called me King. I think you might as well call me King--it will keep your dear name alive in the family when you no longer answer to it yourself. Now"--as she paused, and was looking at him rather strangely--"what were you going to say?" "I was going to say that I have not wasted this week since you went away. A great deal has happened--a great many changes--and I was helped by something outside myself to make up my mind." "I don't believe it--I don't believe it, Elizabeth. You know you love me, and you know that, whatever your religious sentiments may be, you would not do violence to them for anything _less_ than that. You are taking me because you love me too well to give me up--for any consideration whatever. So don't say you are not." She touched his shoulder for a moment with her cheek. "Oh, I do love you, I do love you!" she murmured, drawing a long, sighing breath. He knew it well, and he did not know how to bear to sit there, unable to respond to her touching confession. He could only knead her hand between his palms. "And you are going to trust me, my love--me and yourself? You are not afraid now?" "No, I don't think I am afraid." She caught her breath a little, and looked grave and anxious as she said it, haunted still by the feeling that duty meant sacrifice and that happiness meant sin in some more or less insidious shape; a habit of thought in which she, like so many more of us, had been educated until it had taken the likeness of a natural instinct. "I don't think I am afraid. Religion, as you say, is a living thing, independent of the creeds that it is dressed in. And--and--you _must_ be a good man!"