her eye. The wrong things she would have said! And I recall, too,
Mrs. Ramboat's slow awakening to something in, the air, the growing
expression of solicitude in her eye, only her well-trained fear of
Marion keeping her from speech.

And at last through all this welter, like a thing fated and altogether
beyond our control, parting came to Marion and me.

I hardened my heart, or I could not have gone. For at the last it came
to Marion that she was parting from me for ever. That overbore all other
things, had turned our last hour to anguish. She forgot for a time
the prospect of moving into a new house, she forgot the outrage on her
proprietorship and pride. For the first time in her life she really
showed strong emotions in regard to me, for the first time, perhaps,
they really came to her. She began to weep slow, reluctant tears. I came
into her room, and found her asprawl on the bed, weeping.

"I didn't know," she cried. "Oh! I didn't understand!"

"I've been a fool. All my life is a wreck!

"I shall be alone!...MUTNEY! Mutney, don't leave me! Oh! Mutney! I
didn't understand."

I had to harden my heart indeed, for it seemed to me at moments in those
last hours together that at last, too late, the longed-for thing had
happened and Marion had come alive. A new-born hunger for me lit her
eyes.

"Don't leave me!" she said, "don't leave me!" She clung to me; she