The beautiful thing about it all was that she was so brave and so strong--braver and stronger than I was. I remember that she comforted me as she might have comforted a child--called me, again and again, her dear, dear boy; whispered again and again that they should not kill me. I was content just to hold her, and to listen to her voice; I thought of nothing else, save of the hopelessness of it all; for I felt that I was wiser than she was, and that I knew the thing to be inevitable. I don't know what power she had exercised, or in what strenuous fashion she had set to work to gain this last interview with me; I only remember with gratitude that they left us alone, and that we sat side by side on the low bed, and talked in whispers. We were both so young that perhaps they relaxed the rules a little, and felt that it did not matter. "I was far away--abroad--and I had no news," she began. "Yes, I know," I replied. "And you travelled night and day since then to reach me." "How did you know that?" she demanded quickly. And then I told her of the dreams I had had, and how I had met her in the wood, and how I had known from her own lips that she was coming to me. She looked at me strangely, passing one hand over her forehead, as though by that mechanical action to clear her mind. "That is very wonderful, Charlie," she said, when I had told her the words she had used. "I said to myself, over and over again, while the slow trains crawled across the countries, and the slow ship ploughed across the sea--I said again and again those words to myself: 'I will reach you--God willing--before they kill you!' That is very wonderful." "Nothing is wonderful with us," I replied, with a quick laugh that made the men turn and look at me curiously. "When I heard what had happened, I scarcely knew at first what to do; and then I knew that I must come back--that I must see you, even if everything else proved hopeless. Lucas would have stopped me; he said it was no affair of mine, and that I must not--should not mix myself up in it. So I got away at night, and came straight to you; it was the least that I could do. Now you are to tell me everything that has happened--everything!" "You will have heard already, Barbara dear, all that has happened--and why I killed him. It was a quarrel--a matter of money." She looked at me with a world of understanding in her eyes. "That is what you have told every one; it is not what you can tell me," she said. "Think, dear"--she laid her hand on my arm, and her lips were quivering, although she spoke bravely enough--"you are to die to-morrow; by the love there is between us, you must not let me believe that you killed a man for such a thing as that. Unless you would kill my soul for ever." "I can tell you nothing else," I replied as steadily as I could. "Perhaps I was not, after all, half so good as you in your love for me believed."