“We must be going, Geoffrey; it grows late,” said Beatrice.  “Oh, Geoffrey, Geoffrey, what have we done?  What can be the end of all this?  It will bring trouble on you, I know that it must.  The old saying will come true.  I saved your life, and I shall bring ruin on you!”

It is characteristic of Beatrice that already she was thinking of the consequences to Geoffrey, not of those to herself.

“Beatrice,” said Geoffrey, “we are in a desperate position.  Do you wish to face it and come away with me, far away to the other side of the world?”

“No, no,” she answered vehemently, “it would be your ruin to abandon the career that is before you.  What part of the world could you go to where you would not be known?  Besides there is your wife to think of.  Ah, God, your wife—­what would she say of me?  You belong to her, you have no right to desert her.  And there is Effie too.  No, Geoffrey, no, I have been wicked enough to learn to love you—­oh, as you were never loved before, if it is wicked to do what one cannot help—­but I am not bad enough for this.  Walk quicker, Geoffrey; we shall be late, and they will suspect something.”

Poor Beatrice, the pangs of conscience were finding her out!

“We are in a dreadful position,” he said again.  “Oh, dearest, I have been to blame.  I should never have come back here.  It is my fault; and though I never thought of this, I did my best to please you.”

“And I thank you for it,” she answered.  “Do not deceive yourself, Geoffrey.  Whatever happens, promise me never for one moment to believe that I reproached or blamed you.  Why should I blame you because you won my heart?  Let me sooner blame the sea on which we floated, the beach where we walked, the house in which we lived, and the Destiny that brought us together.  I am proud and glad to love you, dear, but I am not so selfish as to wish to ruin you:  Geoffrey—­I had rather die.”

“Don’t talk so,” he said, “I cannot bear it.  What are we to do?  Am I to go away and see you no more?  How can we live so, Beatrice?”

“Yes, Geoffrey,” she answered heavily, taking him by the hand and gazing up into his face, “you are to go away and see me no more, not for years and years.  This is what we have brought upon ourselves, it is the price that we must pay for this hour which has gone.  You are to go away to-morrow, that we may be put out of temptation, and you must come back no more.  Sometimes I shall write to you, and sometimes perhaps you will write to me, till the thing becomes a burden, then you can stop.  And whether you forget me or not—­and, Geoffrey, I do not think you will—­you will know that I shall never forget you, whom I saved from the sea—­to love me.”

There was something so sweet and infinitely tender about her words, instinct as they were with natural womanly passion, that Geoffrey bent at heart beneath their weight as a fir bends beneath the gentle, gathering snow.  What was he to do, how could he leave her?  And yet she was right.  He must go, and go quickly, lest his strength might fail him, and hand in hand they should pass a bourne from which there is no return.