“Now, Robert put yourself in my place, and try to think for me.  I have been Johanna’s child for thirty years; she is entirely dependent upon me.  Her health is feeble; every year of her life is at least doubtful.  If she lost me I think she would never live out the next three years.  You would not like that?”

“No.”

“In all divided duties like this somebody must suffer; the question is, which can suffer best?  She is old and frail, we are young; she is alone, we are two; she never had any happiness in her life, except, perhaps me; and we—­oh how happy we are!  I think, Robert, it would be better for us to suffer than poor Johanna.”

“You little Jesuit,” he said:  but the higher nature of the man was roused; he was no longer angry.

“It is only for a short time, remember—­only three years.”

“And how can I do without you for three years?”

“Yes, Robert, you can.”  And she put her arms round his neck, and looked at him, eye to eye.  “You know I am your very own, a piece of yourself, as it were; that when I let you go it is like tearing myself from myself; yet I can bear it, rather than do, or let you do, in the smallest degree, a thing which is not right.”

Robert Lyon was not a man of many words; but he had the rare faculty of seeing a case clearly, without reference to himself, and of putting it clearly also, when necessary.

“It seems to me, Hilary, that this is hardly a matter of abstract right or wrong, or a good deal might be argued on my side of the subject.  It is more a case of personal conscience.  The two are not always identical, though they look so at first; but they both come to the same result.”

“And that is—­”

“If my little woman thinks it right to act as she does, I also think it right to let her.  And let this be the law of our married life, if we ever are married,” and he sighed, “that when we differ each should respect the other’s conscience, and do right in the truest sense, by allowing the other to do the same.”

“Oh, Robert! how good you are.”

So these two, an hour after, met Johanna with cheerful faces; and she never knew how much both had sacrificed for her sake.  Once only, when she was for a few minutes absent from the parlor, did Robert Lyon renew the subject, to suggest a medium course.

But Hilary resolutely refused.  Not that she doubted him—­she doubted herself.  She knew quite well by the pang that darted through her like a shaft of ice, as she felt his warm arm round her, and thought of the time when she would feel it no more, that, after she had been Robert Lyon’s happy wife for three months, to let him go to India without her would be simply and utterly impossible.

Fast fled the months; they dwindled into weeks, and then into days.  I shall not enlarge upon this time.  Now, when the ends of the world have been drawn together, and every family has one or more relatives abroad, a grief like Hilary’s has become so common that nearly every one can, in degree, understand it.  How bitter such partings are, how much they take out of the brief span of mortal life, and, therefore, how far they are justifiable, for any thing short of absolute necessity, Heaven knows.