It was another soft and soundless night, without stars, very dark, and with an empty echoing air, which seemed to say that thunder was not far off, for the churning of the nightjar vibrated from the glen, and the distant roar of the tide, now rising, was like the rumble of drums at a soldier’s funeral.

Just as we sat down the pleasure-steamer we had seen in the morning re-crossed our breadth of sea on its way back to Blackwater; and lit up on deck and in all its port-holes, it looked like a floating cafe chantant full of happy people, for they were singing in chorus a rugged song which Martin and I had known all our lives—­

     Ramsey town, Ramsey town, smiling by the sea,
     Here’s a health to my true love, wheresoe’er she be.

When the steamer had passed into darkness, Martin said: 

“I don’t want to hurt you again, Mary, but before I go there’s something I want to know. . . .  If you cannot divorce your husband, and if . . . if you cannot come to me what . . . what is left to us?”

I tried to tell him there was only one thing left to us, and (as much for myself as for him) I did my best to picture the spiritual heights and beauties of renunciation.

“Does that mean that we are to . . . to part?” he said.  “You going your way and I going mine . . . never to meet again?”

That cut me to the quick, so I said—­it was all I could trust myself to say—­that the utmost that was expected of us was that we should govern our affections—­control and conquer them.

“Do you mean that we are to stamp them out altogether?” he said.

That cut me to the quick too, and I felt like a torn bird that is struggling in the lime, but I contrived to say that if our love was guilty love it was our duty to destroy it.

“Is that possible?” he said.

“We must ask God to help us,” I answered, and then, while his head was down and I was looking out into the darkness, I tried to say that though he was suffering now he would soon get over this disappointment.

“Do you wish me to get over it?” he asked.

This confused me terribly, for in spite of all I was saying I knew at the bottom of my heart that in the sense he intended I did not and could not wish it.

“We have known and cared for each other all our lives, Mary—­isn’t that so?  It seems as if there never was a time when we didn’t know and care for each other.  Are we to pray to God, as you say, that a time may come when we shall feel as if we had never known and cared for each other at all?”

My throat was fluttering—­I could not answer him.

“I can’t,” he said.  “I never shall—­never as long as I live.  No prayers will ever help me to forget you.”

I could not speak.  I dared not look at him.  After a moment he said in a thicker voice: 

“And you . . . will you be able to forget me?  By praying to God will you be able to wipe me out of your mind?”