‘Betray you, Rose?’

‘You said that you loved me once.’

She was weeping, and all his spirit melted, and his love cried out:  ’I said “till death,” and till death it will be, Rose.’

’Then why, why did you betray me, Evan?  I know it all.  But if you blackened yourself to me, was it not because you loved something better than me?  And now you think me false!  Which of us two has been false?  It ’s silly to talk of these things now too late!  But be just.  I wish that we may be friends.  Can we, unless you bend a little?’

The tears streamed down her cheeks, and in her lovely humility he saw the baseness of that pride of his which had hitherto held him up.

’Now that you are in this house where I was born and am to live, can you regret what has come between us, Rose?’

Her lips quivered in pain.

‘Can I do anything else but regret it all my life, Evan?’

How was it possible for him to keep his strength?

‘Rose!’ he spoke with a passion that made her shrink, ’are you bound to this man?’ and to the drooping of her eyes, ’No.  Impossible, for you do not love him.  Break it.  Break the engagement you cannot fulfil.  Break it and belong to me.  It sounds ill for me to say that in such a place.  But Rose, I will leave it.  I will accept any assistance that your father—­that any man will give me.  Beloved—­noble girl!  I see my falseness to you, though I little thought it at the time—­fool that I was!  Be my help, my guide-as the soul of my body!  Be mine!’

‘Oh, Evan!’ she clasped her hands in terror at the change in him, that was hurrying her she knew not whither, and trembling, held them supplicatingly.

’Yes, Rose:  you have taught me what love can be.  You cannot marry that man.’

’But, my honour, Evan!  No.  I do not love him; for I can love but one.  He has my pledge.  Can I break it?’

The stress on the question choked him, just as his heart sprang to her.

‘Can you face the world with me, Rose?’

’Oh, Evan! is there an escape for me?  Think Decide!—­No—­no! there is not.  My mother, I know, looks on it so.  Why did she trust me to be with you here, but that she thinks me engaged to him, and has such faith in me?  Oh, help me!—­be my guide.  Think whether you would trust me hereafter!  I should despise myself.’

Not if you marry him!’ said Evan, bitterly.  And then thinking as men will think when they look on the figure of a fair girl marching serenely to a sacrifice, the horrors of which they insist that she ought to know:  half-hating her for her calmness—­adoring her for her innocence:  he said:  ’It rests with you, Rose.  The world will approve you, and if your conscience does, why—­farewell, and may heaven be your help.’

She murmured, ‘Farewell.’

Did she expect more to be said by him?  What did she want or hope for now?  And yet a light of hunger grew in her eyes, brighter and brighter, as it were on a wave of yearning.