Say to me once
here, before we know what the future will be, that you love me. Then I can
bear all."
She turned and looked him full in the eyes, that infinite flame in her own
which burns all passions into one. "I cannot, dear," she said.
Then she hurriedly rose, her features quivering. Without a word they went
down the quiet path to the river and on toward the gates of the park
where the coach was waiting to take them back to Herridon.
They did not see Mark Telford before their coach left. But, standing back
in the shadow of the trees, he saw them. An hour before he had hated Hagar
and had wished that they were in some remote spot alone with pistols in
their hands. Now he could watch the two together without anger, almost
without bitterness. He had lost in the game, and he was so much the true
gamester that he could take his defeat when he knew it was defeat quietly.
Yet the new defeat was even harder on him than the old. All through the
years since he had seen her there had been the vague conviction, under all
his determination to forget, that they would meet again, and that all
might come right. That was gone, he knew, irrevocably.
"That's over," he said as he stood looking at them. "The king is dead.
Long live the king!"
He lit a cigar and watched the coach drive away, then saw the coach in
which he had come drive up also and its passengers mount.
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