"When I marry her," he added, after a moment, "I shall take her far away, Lina. I think it best--as you said--to put the whole width of the world between you and me forever." She bowed speechlessly. The blue-gray-eyes--black now with a yearning love and fathomless despair--looked into hers gloomily a moment, then the carriage-door clanged heavily between them, the carriage-wheels echoed "low on the sand and loud on the stone." CHAPTER XXXV. "Ronald, there is something I should like to tell you," Walter Earle said to his friend, with a hesitating air, when they found themselves alone a little while that evening. Ronald Valchester looked at the handsome face lying on the lace-trimmed pillow. Despite its pallor it wore a look of triumphant happiness. "Walter, you need not tell me," he said, with outward calmness. "I have heard. Allow me to congratulate you." "Thank you," Walter replied; then he looked at the calm, inscrutable face. "Ronald, I hope you do not blame me," the wounded man went on, anxiously; "I have always loved her, but I would not have taken her from you, only you know you never could have married her with your views of divorce. But as I think differently from you I cannot believe I am wrong to marry her when I am better, and she is free." "I do not blame you in the least," answered Ronald Valchester. "If I had known all the time how well you loved her, Walter, I must have marveled at your persistent efforts to convert me to your own belief that a legal divorce makes men and women free to marry again." "If I could convert you even now," said Walter, earnestly, "I would resign her to you the very moment in which she is free." "You cannot convert me, Walter," Ronald answered with a sad smile. "God only knows what I have suffered through this belief of mine, but I cannot change it, nor act inconsistently with it. Yet I could not ask Lina to remain alone all her life because my own views are at variance with the rest of the world, or a majority of it, at least. I hope that you may make her very happy." "I shall try, certainly," Walter said, earnestly. "If I recover, and I feel as if I cannot die now, with this prospect of happiness in the future, I shall marry Lina as soon as Professor Larue has secured a divorce for her. I shall take her back to Laurel Hill, and spend my life in trying to win her heart and make her happy." "And I," said Ronald, with brave composure, "shall marry Violet as soon as you are well enough to go to church with us. Then we shall make our home across the sea in sunny Italy." Walter Earle rose feebly on his elbow and stared at his friend. "Marry Violet--marry Violet," he cried, incredulously. "Yes--I asked her to-day, and she said she would be my wife." "You do not love her?" Walter exclaimed, bewildered. "Not yet," the poet confessed, flushing slightly, at Walter's surprised gaze. "Why marry her then?" "Lina wished me to do so," Ronald replied, with gentle frankness.