My cuckoo clock struck twelve. Martin looked at me. I looked at him. Our eyes fell. He took my hand. It was cold and moist. His own was hot and trembling.

"So this is ... the end," he said.

"Yes ... the end," I answered.

"Well, we've had a jolly evening to finish up with, anyway," he said. "I shall always remember it."

I tried to say he would soon have other evenings to think about that would make him forget this one.

"Never in this world!" he answered.

I tried to wish him good luck, and great success, and a happy return to fame and fortune. He looked at me with his great liquid eyes and said:

"Aw, well, that's all as one now."

I tried to tell him it would always be a joy to me to remember that he and I had been such great, great friends.

He looked at me again, and answered:

"That's all as one also."

I reproached myself for the pain I was causing him, and to keep myself in countenance I began to talk of the beauty and nobility of renunciation--each sacrificing for the other's sake all sinful thoughts and desires.

"Yes, I'm doing what you wish," he said. "I can't deny you anything."

That cut me deep, so I went on to say that if I had acted otherwise I should always have had behind me the memory of the vows I had broken, the sacrament I had violated, and the faith I had abandoned.

"All the same we might have been very happy," he said, and then my throat became so thick that I could not say any more.

After a few moments he said:

"It breaks my heart to leave you. But I suppose I must, though I don't know what is going to happen."

"All that is in God's hands," I said.

"Yes," said Martin, "it's up to Him now."

It made my heart ache to look at his desolate face, so, struggling hard with my voice, I tried to tell him he must not despair.

"You are so young," I said. "Surely the future holds much happiness for you."

And then, though I knew that the bare idea of another woman taking the love I was turning away would have made the world a blank for me, I actually said something about the purest joys of love falling to his lot some day.

"No, by the Lord God," said Martin. "There'll be no other woman for me.

If I'm not to have you I'll wear the willow for you the same as if you were dead."

There was a certain pain in that, but there was a thrill of secret joy in it too.

He was still holding my hand. We held each other's hands a long time. In spite of my affected resignation I could not let his hand go. I felt as if I were a drowning woman and his hand were my only safety.

Nevertheless I said:

"We must say good-night and good-bye now."

"And if it is for ever?"

"Don't say that."

"But if it is?"

"Well, then ... for ever."

"At least give me something to take away with me," he said.

"Better not," I answered, but even as I spoke I dropped the handkerchief which I had been holding in my other hand and he picked it up.

I knew that my tears, though I was trying to keep them back, were trickling down my cheeks. I saw that his face was all broken up as it had been the night before.

There was a moment of silence in which I was conscious of nothing but the fierce beating of my pulse, and then he raised my hand to his lips, dropped it gently and walked over to the door.

But after he had opened it he turned and looked at me. I looked at him, longing, craving, hungering for his love as for a flame at which my heart could warm itself.

Then came a blinding moment. It seemed as if in an instant he lost all control of himself, and his love came rushing upon him like a mighty surging river.

Flinging the door back he returned to me with long strides, and snatching me up in his great arms, he lifted me off my feet, clasped me tightly to him, kissed me passionately on the mouth and cried in a quivering, husky voice:

"You are my wife. I am your real husband. I am not leaving you because you are married to this brute, but for the sake of your soul. We love each other. We shall continue to love each other. No matter where you are, or what they do with you, you are mine and always will be."

My blood was boiling. The world was reeling round me. There was a roaring in my brain. All my spiritual impulses had gone. I was a woman, and it was the same to me as if the primordial man had taken possession of me by sheer force. Yet I was not afraid of that. I rejoiced in it. I wanted to give myself up to it.

But the next moment Martin had dropped me, and fled from the room, clashing the door behind him.

I felt as if a part of myself had been torn from my breast and had gone out with him.

The room seemed to become dark.

SIXTY-NINTH CHAPTER

For a moment I stood where Martin had left me, throbbing through and through like an open wound, telling myself that he had gone, that I should never see him again, and that I had driven him away from me.

Those passionate kisses had deprived me of the power of consecutive thought. I could only feel. And the one thing I felt above everything else was that the remedy I had proposed to myself for my unhappy situation--renunciation--was impossible, because Martin was a part of my own being and without him I could not live.

"Martin! Martin! My love! My love!" cried the voice of my heart.

In fear lest I had spoken the words aloud, and in terror of what I might do under the power of them, I hurried into my bedroom and locked and bolted the door.