“Ay,” said Henry, bitterly, “you will do anything but the one thing I ask.”

“Yes, anything but defy my father.  He is father and mother both to me.  How unfortunate we both are!  If you knew what it costs me to deny you anything, if you knew how I long to follow you round the world—­”

She choked with emotion, and seemed on the point of yielding, after all.

But he said, bitterly, “You long to follow me round the world, and you won’t go a twelve-days’ voyage with me to save my life.  Ah, it is always so.  You don’t love me as poor Jael Dence loves me.  She saved my life without my asking her; but you won’t do it when I implore you.”

“Henry, my own darling, if any woman on earth loves you better than I do, for God’s sake marry her, and let me die to prove I loved you a little.”

“Very well,” said he, grinding his teeth.  “Next week I leave this place with a wife.  I give you the first offer, because I love you.  I shall give Jael the second, because she loves me.”

So then he flung out of the room, and left Grace Carden half fainting on the sofa, and drowned in tears.

But before he got back to the works he repented his violence, and his heart yearned for her more than ever.

With that fine sense of justice which belongs to love, he spoke roughly to Jael Dence.

She stared, and said nothing, but watched him furtively, and saw his eyes fill with tears at the picture memory recalled of Grace’s pale face and streaming eyes.

She put a few shrewd questions, and his heart was so full he could not conceal the main facts, though he suppressed all that bore reference to Jael herself.  She took Grace’s part, and told him he was all in the wrong; why could not he go to America alone, and sell his patents, and then come back and marry Grace with the money?  “Why drag her across the water, to make her quarrel with her father?”

“Why, indeed?” said Henry:  “because I’m not the man I was.  I have no manhood left.  I have not the courage to fight the Trades, nor yet the courage to leave the girl I love so dearly.”

“Eh, poor lad,” said Jael, “thou hast courage enough; but it has been too sore tried, first and last.  You have gone through enough to break a man of steel.”

She advised him to go and make his submission at once.

He told her she was his guardian angel, and kissed her, in the warmth of his gratitude; and he went back to Woodbine Villa, and asked Grace’s forgiveness, and said he would go alone to the States and come back with plenty of money to satisfy Mr. Carden’s prudence, and—­

Grace clutched him gently with both hands, as if to hinder from leaving her.  She turned very pale, and said, “Oh my heart!”

Then she laid her head on his shoulder, and wept piteously.

He comforted her, and said, “What is it? a voyage of twelve days!  And yet I shall never have the courage to bid you good-by.”