I had told her only a few minutes before that the brain is ineffaceably stamped with the impress of every event in our lives.  But how much more deeply do some events burn themselves there than others’ I see it all now—­more clearly, it seems to me, than my eyes saw it then.  There is the huge, high entrance to the outer caves where we are standing, with a massive lintel of rocks overhead, all black but for a few purple and gray tints scattered across the blackness.  Behind us the sea is glistening, and prismatic colors play upon the cliffs.  Shadows fall from rocks we cannot see.  Olivia stands before me, pale and terrified, the water running from her heavy dress, which clings about her slender figure.  She shrinks away from me a pace or two.

“Hush!” she cries, in a tone of mingled pain and dread—­“hush!”

There was something so positive, so prohibitory in her voice and gesture, that my heart contracted, and a sudden chill of despondency ran through me.  But I could not be silent now.  It was impossible for me to hold my peace, even at her bidding.

“Why do you say hush?” I asked, peremptorily.  “I love you, Olivia.  Is there any reason why I should not love you?”

“Yes,” she said, very slowly and with quivering lips.  “I was married four years ago, and my husband is living still!”

CHAPTER THE THIRTIETH.

A GLOOMY ENDING.

Olivia’s answer struck me like an electric shock.  For some moments I was simply stunned, and knew neither what she had said, nor where we were.

I suppose half a minute had elapsed before I fairly received the meaning of her words into my bewildered brain.  It seemed as if they were thundering in my ears, though she had uttered them in a low, frightened voice.  I scarcely understood them when I looked up and saw her leaning against the rock, with her hands covering her face.

“Olivia!” I cried, stretching out my arms toward her, as though she would flutter back to them and lay her head again where it had been resting upon my shoulder, with her face against my neck.

But she did not see my gesture, and the next moment I knew that she could never let me hold her in my arms again.  I dared not even take one step nearer to her.

“Olivia,” I said again, after another minute or two of troubled silence, with no sound but the thunders of the sea reverberating through the perilous strait where we had almost confronted death together—­“Olivia, is it true?”

She bowed her head still lower upon her hands, in speechless confirmation.  A stricken, helpless, cowering child she seemed to me, standing there in her drenched clothing.  An unutterable tenderness, altogether different from the feverish passion of a few minutes ago, filled my heart as I looked at her.

“Come,” I said, as calmly as I could speak, “I am at any rate your doctor, and I am bound to take care of you.  You must not stay here wet and cold.  Let us make haste back to Tardif’s, Olivia.”