“Oh, I never could give you up, I never would unless you yourself told me to.  Then I would do it,—­for you.  But you won’t ask me, now?”

He put his arm around her shoulders, and the strength of it seemed to calm her.

“No, dear.  I would make the sacrifice, ask you to make it, if it would be of any good.  As you say, he does not understand.  And you couldn’t go on living with him and loving me.  That solution is impossible.  We can only hope that the time will come when he will realize his need of you, and send for you.”

“And did he not ask you anything more?”

Hodder hesitated.  He had intended to spare her that . . . .  Her divination startled him.

“I know, I know without your telling me.  He offered you money, he consented to our—­marriage if you would give up St. John’s.  Oh, how could he,” she cried.  “How could he so misjudge and insult you!”

“It is not me he misjudges, Alison, it is mankind, it is God.  That is his terrible misfortune.”  Hodder released her tenderly.  “You must see him—­you must tell him that when he needs you, you will come.”

“I will see him now, she said.  You will wait for, me?”

“Now?” he repeated, taken aback by her resolution, though it was characteristic.

“Yes, I will go as I am.  I can send for my things.  My father has given me no choice, no reprieve,—­not that I ask one.  I have you, dear.  I will stay with Mr. Bentley to-night, and leave for New York to-morrow, to do what I have to do—­and then you will be ready for me.”

“Yes,” he said, “I shall be ready.”

He lingered in the well-remembered hall . . . .  And when at last she came down again her eyes shone bravely through her tears, her look answered the question of his own.  There was no need for speech.  With not so much as a look behind she left, with him, her father’s house.

Outside, the mist had become a drizzle, and as they went down the walk together beside the driveway she slipped her arm into his, pressing close to his side.  Her intuition was perfect, the courage of her love sublime.

“I have you, dear,” she whispered, “never in my life before have I been rich.”

“Alison!”

It was all he could say, but the intensity of his mingled feeling went into the syllables of her name.  An impulse made them pause and turn, and they stood looking back together at the great house which loomed the greater in the thickening darkness, its windows edged with glow.  Never, as in this moment when the cold rain wet their faces, had the thought of its comfort and warmth and luxury struck him so vividly; yes, and of its terror and loneliness now, of the tortured spirit in it that found no rest.

“Oh, John,” she cried, “if we only could!”

He understood her.  Such was the perfect quality of their sympathy that she had voiced his thought.  What were rain and cold, the inclemency of the elements to them?  What the beauty and the warmth of those great, empty rooms to Eldon Parr?  Out of the heaven of their happiness they looked down, helpless, into the horrors of the luxury of hell.