“Yes, yes,” he said, hastily, “if it is all true—­if it is all possible—­what you speak of.  Sometimes I think it is madness of me to fling away my only chance; to have everything I care for in the world near me, and to go away and perhaps never return.  Sometimes I know in my heart that I shall never see you again—­never after this day.”

“Ah, now,” said she, brightly—­for she feared this black demon getting possession of him again—­“I will kill that superstition right off.  You shall see me after to-day; for as sure as my name is Gertrude White, I will go up to the railway station to-morrow morning and see you off.  There!”

“You will?” he said, with a flush of joy on his face.

“But I don’t want any one else to see me,” she said, looking down.

“Oh, I will manage that,” he said, eagerly.  “I will get Major Stuart into the carriage ten minutes before the train starts.”

“Colonel Ross?”

“He goes back to Erith to-night.”

“And I will bring to the station,” said she, with some shy color in her face, “a little present—­if you should speak of me to your mother, you might give her this from me; it belonged to my mother.”

Could anything have been more delicately devised than this tender and timid message?

“You have a woman’s heart,” he said.

And then in the same low voice she began to explain that she would like him to go to the theatre that evening, and that perhaps he would go alone; and would he do her the favor to be in a particular box?  She took a piece of paper from her purse, and shyly handed it to him.  How could he refuse?—­though he flushed slightly.  It was a favor she asked.  “I will know where you are,” she said.

And so he was not to bid good-by to her on this occasion, after all.  But he bade good-by to Mr. White, and to Miss Carry, who was quite civil to him now that he was going away; and then he went out into the cold and gray December afternoon.  They were lighting the lamps.  But gaslight throws no cheerfulness on a grave.

He went to the theatre later on; and the talisman she had given him took him into a box almost level with the stage, and so near to it that the glare of the foot-lights bewildered his eyes, until he retired into the corner.  And once more he saw the puppets come and go, with the one live woman among them whose every tone of voice made his heart leap.  And then this drawing-room scene, in which she comes in alone, and talking to herself?  She sits down to the piano carelessly.  Some one enters unperceived, and stands silent there, to listen to the singing.  And this air that she sings, waywardly, like a light-hearted schoolgirl:—­

“Hi-ri-libhin o, Brae MacIntyre,
Hi-ri-libhin o, Costly thy wooing! 
Thou’st slain the maid. 
Hug-o-rin-o, ’Tis thy undoing! 
Hi-ri-libhin o, Friends of my love,
Hi-ri-libhin o, Do not upbraid him;
He was leal
Hug-o-rin-o, Chance betrayed him.”