It was as if she had been abruptly wakened from a beautiful dream.
"You are not going, Percy!" she murmured, and her own voice now sounded hollow and forced.

"Oh! if you loved me you would not go!" "If I love you!" Nay! in this at least there was no dream! no coldness in his voice when he repeated those words with such a sigh of tenderness, such a world of longing, that the bitterness of her great pain vanished, giving place to tears.

He took her hand in his.

The passion was momentarily conquered, forced within his innermost soul, by his own alter ego, that second personality in him, the cold-blooded and coolly-calculating adventurer who juggled with his life and tossed it recklessly upon the sea of chance 'twixt a doggerel and a smile.

But the tender love lingered on, fighting the enemy a while longer, the wistful desire was there for her kiss, the tired longing for the exquisite repose of her embrace.
He took her hand in his, and bent his lips to it, and with the warmth of his kiss upon it, she felt a moisture like a tear.
"I must go, dear," he said, after a little while.
"Why?
Why ?" she repeated obstinately.