Septimus rose to his feet.

“Oh, don’t, Emmy, don’t!  I can’t stand it.”

She rose too and put her hands on his shoulders.

“You must let me speak to-night—­our last night before we part.  It isn’t generous of you not to listen.”

The yellow dog, disturbed in his slumbers, shook himself, and regarding them with an air of humble sympathy turned and walked away discreetly into the shadow.  The fisher folk on the jetty still sang their mournful chorus.

“Sit down again.”

Septimus yielded.  “But why give yourself pain?” he asked gently.

“To ease my heart.  The knife does good.  Yes, I know I’ve been worthless.  But I’m not as bad as that.  Don’t you see how horrible the idea is to me?  I must pay you back the money—­and of course not come on you for any more.  You’ve done too much for me already.  It sometimes stuns me to think of it.  It was only because I was in hell and mad—­and grasped at the hand you held out to me.  I suppose I’ve done you the biggest wrong a woman can do a man.  Now I’ve come to my senses, I shudder at what I’ve done.”

“Why?  Why?” said Septimus, growing miserably unhappy.

“How can you ever marry, unless we go through the vulgarity of a collusive divorce?”

“My dear girl,” said he, “what woman would ever marry a preposterous lunatic like me?”

“There’s not a woman living who ought not to have gone down on her bended knees if she had married you.”

“I should never have married,” said he, laying his hand for a moment reassuringly on hers.

“Who knows?” She gave a slight laugh.  “Zora is only a woman like the rest of us.”

“Why talk of Zora?” he said quickly.  “What has she to do with it?”

“Everything.  You don’t suppose I don’t know,” she replied in a low voice.  “It was for her sake and not for mine.”

He was about to speak when she put out her hand and covered his mouth.

“Let me talk for a little.”

She took up her parable again and spoke very gently, very sensibly.  The moonlight peacefulness was in her heart.  It softened the tone of her voice and reflected itself in unfamiliar speech.

“I seem to have grown twenty years older,” she said.

She desired on that night to make her gratitude clear to him, to ask his pardon for past offenses.  She had been like a hunted animal; sometimes she had licked his hand and sometimes she had scratched it.  She had not been quite responsible.  Sometimes she had tried to send him away, for his own sake.  For herself, she had been terrified at the thought of losing him.

“Another man might have done what you did, out of chivalry; but no other man but you would not have despised the woman.  I deserved it; but I knew you didn’t despise me.  You have been just the same to me all through as you were in the early days.  It braced me up and helped me to keep some sort of self-respect.  That was the chief reason why I could not let you go.  Now all is over.  I am quite sane and as happy as I ever shall be.  After to-night it stands to reason we must each lead our separate lives.  You can’t do anything more for me, and God knows, poor dear, I can’t do anything for you.  So I want to thank you.”