A painful silence fell between them:  then Edgar, not looking at her, said in a constrained voice, “I will keep your dreadful secret, Leam, sacredly for ever.  You feel sure of that, I hope.  But, as you say, we must part.  I do not pretend to be better than other men, but I could not take as my wife one who had been guilty of such an awful crime as this.”

“No,” said Leam, her parched lips scarcely able to form a word at all.

“Your secret will be safe with me,” he repeated.

She did not reply.  In giving up himself she had given up all that made life lovely, and the refuse might as well go as not.

“But we must part.”

“Yes,” said Leam.

He turned back to the window, desperately troubled.  He did really love her, passionately, sincerely.  He longed at this very moment to take her in his arms and tell her that he would accept her crime if only he might have herself.  Had he not been the master of the Hill and a Harrowby he would have done so, but the master of the Hill and the head of the house of Harrowby had a character to maintain and a social ideal to keep pure.  He could not bring into such a home as his, present to his mother as her daughter, to his sisters as their sister, a girl who by her own confession was a murderess—­a girl who, if the law had its due, would be hanged by the neck in the precincts of the county jail till she was dead.  He might have been sinful enough in his own life, in the ordinary way of men—­and truly there were passages in his past that would scarcely bear the light—­but what were the worst of his misdemeanors compared with this awful crime?  No:  he must resolutely crush the last lingering impulse of tenderness, and leave her to work through her own tribulation, as he also must work through his.

“But we must part,” he said for a third time.

Her lips quivered.  She did not answer, only bent her head in sign of acquiescence.

“It is hard to say it, harder still to do; and I who loved you so dearly!” cried Edgar with the angry despair of a man forced against himself to give up his desire.

She put up her hands.  “Don’t!” she said with a sharp cry.  “I cannot bear to hear about your love.”

He gave a sudden sob.  Her love for him was very precious to him—­his for her very strong.

“Why did you tell me?” he then said.  “And yet you did the right thing to tell me:  I was wrong to say that.  It was good of you, Leam—­noble, like yourself.”

“I love you.  That is not being noble,” she answered slowly and with infinite pathos.  “I could not have deceived you after I remembered.”

“You are too noble to deceive,” he said, holding out his hand.

Leam turned away.  “I am not fit to touch your hand,” she said, the very pride of contrition in her voice—­pride for him, if humiliation for herself.

“For this once,” he pleaded.

“I am unworthy,” she answered.