“Not mine,” he murmured.  “Never mine but in my dreams.  O wretched dreams, that drive me mad.  Pauline, they will tell us that we must not dream—­we must not weep, we must be stocks and stones.  We must wear this weight of living death till that good Lord that makes such laws shall send us death in mercy.  Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years of suffering:  that might almost satisfy Him, one would think.  Pauline! you and I are to say good-bye to-night.  Good-bye!  People talk of it as a cruel word.  Think of it:  if it were but for a year, a year with hope at the end of it to keep our hearts alive, it would be terrible, and we should need be brave.  The tears that lovers shed over a year apart; the days that have got to come and go, how weary.  The nights—­the nights that sleep flies off from, and that memory reigns over.  Count them—­over three hundred come in every year.  One, you think while it is passing, is enough to kill you:  one such night of restless torture, and how many shall we multiply our three hundred by?  We are young, Pauline.  You are a child, a very child.  I am in the very flush and strength of manhood.  There is half a century of suffering in me yet:  this frame, this brain, will stand the wear of the hard years to come but too, too well.  There is no hope of death.  There is no hope in life.  That star has set.  Good God!  And that makes hell—­why should I wait for it—­it cannot be worse there than here.  Don’t listen to me—­it will not be as hard for you—­you are so young—­you have no sins to torture you—­only a little love to conquer and forget.  You will marry a man who lives for you, and who is patient and will wait till this is over.  Ah, no:  by Heaven!  I can’t quite stand it yet.  Pauline, you never loved him, did you—­never blushed for him—­never listened for his coming with your lips apart and your heart fluttering, as I have seen you listen when you thought that I was coming?  No, I know you never loved him:  I know you have loved me alone—­me—­who ought to have forbidden you.  Forgive—­forgive—­forgive me.”

A passion of tears had come to my relief, and I shook from head to foot with sobs.  I cannot feel ashamed when I remember that he held me for one moment in his arms.  He had been to me till that shock, strength, truth, justice:  the man I loved.  How could I in one instant know him by his sin alone, and undo all my trust?  I knew only this, that it was for the last time, and that my heart was broken.

I forgave him—­that was an idle form; in my great love I never felt that there was anything to be forgiven, except the wrong that fate had done me, in making my love so hopeless.  He told me to forget him; that seemed to me as idle; but all his words were precious, and all my soul was in his hand.  When, at that moment, the sound of wheels upon the gravel came, and the sound of laughter and of voices, I sprang up; he caught me in his arms and held me closely.  Another moment, the parting was over, and I was kneeling by my bed up-stairs, weeping, sobbing, hopeless.