"Do I understand then—?"
"That I do consent?" She gravely shook her head. "No—for I see. You'll marry me without the money; you won't marry me with it.
If I don't consent you don't."
"You lose me?" He showed, though naming it frankly, a sort of awe of her high grasp. "Well, you lose nothing else. I make over to you every penny."
Prompt was his own clearness, but she had no smile this time to spare.
"Precisely—so that I must choose."
"You must choose."
Strange it was for him then that she stood in his own rooms doing it, while, with an intensity now beyond any that had ever made his breath come slow, he waited for her act.
"There's but one thing that can save you from my choice."
"From your choice of my surrender to you?"
"Yes"—and she gave a nod at the long envelope on the table—"your surrender of that."
"What is it then?"
"Your word of honour that you're not in love with her memory."
"Oh—her memory!"
"Ah"—she made a high gesture—"don't speak of it as if you couldn't be.
I could in your place; and you're one for whom it will do.
Her memory's your love.
You want no other."
He heard her out in stillness, watching her face but not moving.
Then he only said:
"I'll marry you, mind you, in an hour."
"As we were?"
"As we were."
But she turned to the door, and her headshake was now the end.
"We shall never be again as we were!"