“Oh, my God, I love you, I love you!” he murmured hoarsely. “I can't let you go. You are soul of my soul and blood of my blood. No, Ella, no,” he continued, as, confused and blushing, she strove to release herself; “I must keep you here. Heaven knows when I may hold you in my arms again. Listen, something terrible has happened,--a thing that may part our lives. Are you strong enough to bear it? Brave and strong and heroic, like the woman I think you?” He relaxed his clasp and stood with hands on her shoulders, forcing her to look at him. She met his passion-filled eyes fearlessly, but her colour had gone. “Part our lives! I don't understand what you mean, Roderick.” “Are you brave enough to face a terrible calamity?” “I shall not faint, if you mean that,” she replied. “What is it?” “I must leave England to-night,” he said in a quick voice. “How long I shall have to stay away, I do not know. It may be weeks, it may be months, it may be years.” She looked at him with perplexed brows and a dawning fear in her eyes. “But to-morrow--” she began. “There will be no to-morrow--for me. Unless----” “Unless what?” He turned away and paced across the room and back again. He had thrown off the gold pince-nez, and now they swung by the cord over his waistcoat, and his small blue eyes, usually obscured by them, glowed strangely and the pupils were dilated. Where the actor, the inveterate _poseur_, ended and the man began, it were impossible to tell. He was playing a part, but playing it in desperate earnestness. The words, the gestures, were false; but the yearning folly of love that vibrated in his voice was as real a thing as had ever entered into the man's life. “I must be plain with you, Ella. It's as much as my life, my honour, your fair happiness, is worth for me to stay in England over to-night. There can be no wedding to-morrow. I have done all that a man could do to avert things. The suspense has been a torturing agony above words. But the inevitable, the inexorable, has come. Oh, God, Ella, if you knew what living hell it is to me to tell you this!”