"Peter, let me come! I'm not afraid of being hurt--not if we're together. It's only the hurt of being without you that I can't bear. . . . Oh, I know what you're thinking"--as she read the negation in his face--"that I should regret it, that I should mind what people said. Dear, if I can give you happiness, things like that simply wouldn't count. . . . Ah, believe me, Peter!"
He looked down at her with the tenderness one accords a child, ignorantly pleading to have its way. He knew Nan's temperament--knew that, in spite of all her courage, when the moment of exaltation had passed not even love itself could make up for the bitterness of its price, if bought at such a cost. He pictured her exposed to the slights of those whose position was still unassailable, waiting drearily at Continental watering-places till the decree absolute should be pronounced, and finally, restored to respectability in so far as marriage with him could make it possible, but always liable to be unpleasantly reminded, as she went through life, that there had been a time when she had outraged convention. It was unthinkable! It would break her utterly.
"Even if that were all, it still wouldn't be possible," he said gently. "You don't know what you would have to face. And I couldn't let you face it. But it isn't all. . . . There's honour, dear, and duty. . . ."
Her gaze met his in dreary interrogation.
"Then--then, you'll go away?" Her voice faltered, broke.
"Yes, I shall go away . . . out of your life."
He fell silent a moment. Then, with an effort, he went on:
"This is good-bye. We mustn't see each other again--"
"No, no," she broke in a little wildly. "Don't go, Peter, I can't bear it." She clung to him, repeating piteously: "Don't go . . . don't go!"
He stooped and pressed his lips to her hair, holding her in his arms.
Presently she lifted her face, white and strained, to his.
"Heart's beloved, there is no other way. We may not love . . . and we can't be together and not love. . . . So I must go."
She lay very still in his arms for a moment. Then he felt a long, shuddering sigh run through her body.
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes. . . . Peter, go very quickly. . . ."
He took her face between his hands and kissed her on the mouth--not passionately, but with the ineffably sad calmness of farewell.