“It’s enough,” she said.  “I think there would be no place for me after all.  What could I do in the world except what you’ve taught me to do?  No, let Caroline go freely, and I give my—­”

“Stop!”

He checked her with his raised hand, and his eyes blazed and glittered in the dead whiteness of his face.  “Don’t give me your word, my dear.  I don’t want that chain to bind you.  There might come a time when some power arose strong enough to threaten to take you from me.  Then I want to show you that I don’t need your promise.  I can hold you for myself.  Only come to me and tell me simply that you will be mine if you can.  Will you do that?”

She crossed the room slowly and stood before him.  “I will do that,” she said faintly, half closing her eyes.  She had come so close that, if he willed, he could have taken her in his arms.  She nerved herself against it; then she felt her hand taken, raised and touched lightly against trembling lips.  When she stepped back she knew that the decisive moment of her life had been passed.

“You are free to go,” said John Mark to Caroline.  “Therefore don’t wait.  Go at once.”

“Ruth!” whispered the girl.

Ruth Tolliver turned away, and the movement brought Caroline beside her, with a cry of pain.  “Is it what I think?” she asked.  “Are you making the sacrifice all for me?  You don’t really care for him, Ruth, and—­”

“Caroline!” broke in John Mark.

She turned at the command of that familiar voice, as if she had been struck with a whip.  He had raised the curtain of the front window beside the door and was pointing up and across the street.

“I see the window of Gregg’s room,” he said.  “A light has just appeared in it.  I suppose he is waiting.  But, if you wish to go, your time is short—­very short!”

An infinite threat was behind the calmness of the voice.  She could only say to Ruth:  “I’ll never forget.”  Then she fled down the hall and through the door, and the two within heard the sharp patter of her heels, as she ran down to the street.

It was freedom for Caroline, and Ruth, lifting her eyes, looked into the face of the man she was to marry.  She could have held out, she felt, had it not been for the sound of those departing footsteps, running so blithely toward a lifetime of happiness.  Even as it was she made herself hold out.  Then a vague astonishment came to clear her mind.  There was no joy in the face of John Mark, only a deep and settled pain.

“You see,” he said, with a smile of anguish, “I have done it.  I have bought the thing I love, and that, you know, is the last and deepest damnation.  If another man had told me that I was capable of such a thing, I’d have killed him on the spot.  But now I have done it!”

“I think I’ll go up to my room,” she answered, her eyes on the floor.  She made herself raise them to his.  “Unless you wish to talk to me longer?”