She threw back her head and gazed into his eyes.  ‘I will tell you,’ she said.  ’I would leave you because I am the daughter of Ephraim Shine, the man whose memory is hated everywhere; the man whose crimes you and yours can never forget; the man who sent your innocent brother to prison, who whitened your mother’s hair with grief, who left you to die in the waters of the mine—­who was a triple thief and a hypocrite.  He was my father and I loved him.  I cannot do anything else but love him now, but you must hate and loathe him.  Think of me as your wife—­me, the thief’s daughter, whispered about, pointed at.  Think, as I have done, of that possible time when you might love me less because of him and the wrong he did you, when you might be ashamed to be seen with me.  People don’t forget crimes like his, Harry; they talk of them to their children.  Think of your mother and your brother.  Think, think—­oh, Harry, think, for my strength is gone.’

He only clasped her closely and kissed her cheek.

‘Think of your mother,’ she continued.  ’Harry, I would die to serve her.  I would rather die than bring shame or grief into her life.’

‘I love you!  I love you!’ he said.

’Think, think of the people pointing at us, whispering about my disgrace.’

’No, dear, you think.  Think of me without you—­cursed, ruined, without a care for anything on earth.  Chris, there’s not for me one ray of sunlight, not one smile in the world without you.’

Her forehead was bent upon his shoulder.  He felt her strength leaving her, and continued with low vehement words: 

‘Dear, you love me, an’ you think it’s your duty to leave me.  I tell you there’s no man on God’s earth here’d be so desolate.  I’d rather be dead than lose you.  To lose you is the only sorrow I can imagine.  I care more for one smile of yours, one touch of your dear fingers, than for anything else in all the world.  If you hate me an’ want to ruin my life, you’ll go.  Chris, if you love me, can’t you see what the loss of you would mean?  I tried to think of it last night an’ couldn’t, it was too terrible.  I was like a child facing a great black cavern peopled with devils.’

His words, his earnestness, brought her new light; she had not realised the depth of his love, she had thought that the blow might be heavy at first, but that he would soon learn to forget.  She understood him better now; his love was like her own, and she knew that to be imperishable.  She no longer struggled, but clung to him with trembling fingers.

‘I did not think you loved me like that, dear,’ she said softly.

‘I worship you!  And you, my wife, my sweet wife?’

She slid her arms about his neck and drew his face to hers.

They stood in the centre of an open plain above which the yellow sun hung gleaming like a ball of gold; there was silence everywhere:  Harry’s horse stood still with his nose to the ground, at a distance Summers’ buggy dipped slowly down into the bend of an old watercourse, and far off in the dim simmering background there was a hazy suggestion of trees.  The solitude was complete.