“All of us must go! our time is short.”

“Very,” she assented.

It sounded like want of feeling.

“If you lose me, Clara!”

“But you are strong, Willoughby.”

“I may be cut off to-morrow.”

“Do not talk in such a manner.”

“It is as well that it should be faced.”

“I cannot see what purpose it serves.”

“Should you lose me, my love!”

“Willoughby!”

“Oh, the bitter pang of leaving you!”

“Dear Willoughby, you are distressed; your mother may recover; let us hope she will; I will help to nurse her; I have offered, you know; I am ready, most anxious.  I believe I am a good nurse.”

“It is this belief—­that one does not die with death!”

“That is our comfort.”

“When we love?”

“Does it not promise that we meet again?”

“To walk the world and see you perhaps—­with another!”

“See me?—­Where?  Here?”

“Wedded . . . to another.  You! my bride; whom I call mine; and you are!  You would be still—­in that horror!  But all things are possible; women are women; they swim in infidelity, from wave to wave!  I know them.”

“Willoughby, do not torment yourself and me, I beg you.”

He meditated profoundly, and asked her:  “Could you be such a saint among women?”

“I think I am a more than usually childish girl.”

“Not to forget me?”

“Oh! no.”

“Still to be mine?”

“I am yours.”

“To plight yourself?”

“It is done.”

“Be mine beyond death?”

“Married is married, I think.”

“Clara! to dedicate your life to our love!  Never one touch; not one whisper! not a thought, not a dream!  Could you—­it agonizes me to imagine . . . be inviolate? mine above?—­mine before all men, though I am gone:—­true to my dust?  Tell me.  Give me that assurance.  True to my name!—­Oh, I hear them.  ‘His relict!’ Buzzings about Lady Patterne.  ‘The widow.’  If you knew their talk of widows!  Shut your ears, my angel!  But if she holds them off and keeps her path, they are forced to respect her.  The dead husband is not the dishonoured wretch they fancied him, because he was out of their way.  He lives in the heart of his wife.  Clara! my Clara! as I live in yours, whether here or away; whether you are a wife or widow, there is no distinction for love—­I am your husband—­say it—­eternally.  I must have peace; I cannot endure the pain.  Depressed, yes; I have cause to be.  But it has haunted me ever since we joined hands.  To have you—­to lose you!”

“Is it not possible that I may be the first to die?” said Miss Middleton.

“And lose you, with the thought that you, lovely as you are, and the dogs of the world barking round you, might . . .  Is it any wonder that I have my feeling for the world?  This hand!—­the thought is horrible.  You would be surrounded; men are brutes; the scent of unfaithfulness excites them, overjoys them.  And I helpless!  The thought is maddening.  I see a ring of monkeys grinning.  There is your beauty, and man’s delight in desecrating.  You would be worried night and day to quit my name, to . . .  I feel the blow now.  You would have no rest for them, nothing to cling to without your oath.”