“We must wait here.  I must stay where I can hear the train coming.”

“The train,—­yes.  You are going in it?  Yet, Grey, you love me?”

She wrung her hands with a frightened cry.

“Paul, don’t tempt me.  I’m weak:  you know that.  Don’t make me fouler than I am.  There ’s something in the world better for us than love:  to try to be pure and true.  You’ll help me to be that, dear Paul?”—­laying her hand on his arm, beseechingly.  “You’ll not keep me back?  It’s hard, you know,”—­trying to smile, her lips only growing colorless.

“I’ll help you, Grey,”—­his face distorted, touching her fingers for an instant with an unutterable tenderness.  “I knew this man was here from the first.  If there was crime in our marriage, I took it on myself.  I was not afraid to face hell for you, child.  But, Grey,” meeting her eye, “I love you.  I will not risk your soul for my selfish pleasure.  If it be a crime for you to stay with me, I will bid you go, and never attempt to see your face again.”

“If it be a crime?  You cannot doubt that, Paul!”

“I do doubt it.  You can obtain a divorce,”—­looking at her, with his color changing.

She pushed back the hair from her forehead.  Her brain ached.  Where was all the clear reasoning she had meant to meet him with?

“No, I will not do that.  I know the law says it is right; but Christ forbade it.  I can’t argue.  I only know his words.”

He walked to and fro:  he could not be still a minute, when in pain.

“Will you sit there?”—­motioning her to a flat rock.  “I want to speak to you.”

She sat down,—­looked at the river.  If she saw that look on his face longer, she would go to him, though God’s own arm stretched between them.  She clenched her little hands together, something in her soul crying out, “I’m trying to do right,” fiercely, to God.  Martyrs for every religion have said the same, when the heat crept closer over the fagots.  They were true to the best they could discover, and He asks no more of any man.

“I want you to hear me patiently,” he said, standing near her, and looking down.  “You said there was something better for us in the world than love.  There is nothing for me.  I’ve not been taught much about God or His ways.  I thought I’d learn them through you.  I’ve lived a coarse, selfish life.  You took me out of it.  I am not very selfish, loving you, little Grey,”—­with a sad smile,—­“for I will give you up sooner than hurt you.  But if I had married you, I think it would have redeemed me.  I want you,” passing his hand over his forehead, uncertainly, “to look at this thing calmly.  We’ll put feeling aside.  Because—­because it matters more than life or death to me.”

He was silent a moment.

“All night I have been trying to face it dispassionately, with reason.  I have succeeded now.”

It is a pitiful thing to see a man choke down such weakness.  Grey would not see it:  her eyes were fastened on her hands.  He controlled himself, going on rapidly.