“Then we must part, my Katherine, for a little.  When will you come again?”

This was a painful question, because Katherine felt, that, however she might excuse herself for the unforeseen stress of pity that all unaware had hurried her into this interview, she knew she could not find the same apology for one deliberate and prearranged.

“Only once more,” Hyde pleaded.  “I had, my Katherine, so many things to say to you.  In my joy, I forgot all.  Come but once more.  Upon my honour, I promise to ask Katherine Van Heemskirk only this once.  To-morrow?  ‘No.’  Two days hence, then?”

“Two days hence I will come again.  Then no more.”

He smiled at her, and put out his hands; and she knelt again by his side, and kissed her “farewell” on his lips.  And, as she put on again her cloak and veil, he drew a small volume towards him, and with trembling hands tore out of it a scrap of paper, and gave it to her.

Under the lilac hedge that night she read it, read it over and over,—­the bit of paper made almost warm and sentient by Phoedria’s tender petition to his beloved,—­

“When you are in company with that other man, behave as if you were absent; but continue to love me by day and by night; want me, dream of me, expect me, think of me, wish for me, delight in me, be wholly with me; in short, be my very soul, as I am yours.”

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VIII.

          “Let determined things to destiny
          Hold unbewailed their way.”

If Katherine had lived at this day, she would probably have spent her time between her promise and its fulfilment in self-analysis and introspective reasoning with her own conscience.  But the women of a century ago were not tossed about with winds of various opinions, or made foolishly subtile by arguments about principles which ought never to be associated with dissent.  A few strong, plain dictates had been set before Katherine as the law of her daily life; and she knew, beyond all controversy, when she disobeyed them.

In her own heart, she called the sin she had determined to commit by its most unequivocal name.  “I shall make happy Richard; but my father I shall deceive and disobey, and against my own soul there will be the lie.”  This was the position she admitted, but every woman is Eve in some hours of her life.  The law of truth and wisdom may be in her ears, but the apple of delight hangs within her reach, and, with a full understanding of the consequences of disobedience, she takes the forbidden pleasure.  And if the vocal, positive command of Divinity was unheeded by the first woman, mere mortal parents surely ought not to wonder that their commands, though dictated by truest love and clearest wisdom, are often lightly held, or even impotent against the voice of some charmer, pleading personal pleasure against duty, and self-will against the law infinitely higher and purer.