“Make this paper valid!” he suddenly demanded.  “Give me my sound mind too.  You’ve given me back my body sound.”

Her lips parted in a smile sufficient to show the row of her white and even teeth, “You are getting well.  It is time for me to go.  As to this—­” She handed him back the paper folded.

“You think it’s only an attempt to heal the soreness of my conscience, don’t you?” he said after a time, shaking his head.  “It was; but it was more.  Well, you can’t put your image out of my heart, anyhow.  I’ve got that.  So you’re going to leave me now?  Soon?  Let it be soon.  I suppose it has to come.”

“My own affairs require me.  There is no possible tenure on which I could stay here much longer.  Not even Jeanne—­”

“No,” said he, at length, again in conviction, shaking his head.  “There isn’t any way.”

“You make it so hard,” said she.  “Why are you so stubborn?”

“Listen!” He turned, and again there came back to his face the old fighting flush.  “I faced the loss of a limb and said I couldn’t stand that and live.  Now you are going to cut the heart out of me.  You ask me to live in spite of that.  How can I?  Were you ever married, Madam?” This last suddenly.

“You may regard it as true,” said she slowly, after long hesitation.  “Were you?”

“You may regard that also as true!” He set his jaw, and looked at her straight.  Their eyes met, steadily, seeking, searching.  They now again, opposed, stood on the firing lines as he had said.

“But you told me,—­” she began.

“I told you nothing, if you will remember.  I only said that, if you could feel as I did, I’d let the heavens fold as a scroll before I’d ask a word about your past.  I’d begin all the world all over again, right here.  So far as I am concerned, I wouldn’t even care about the law.  But you’re not so lawless as I am.  And somehow, I’ve got to thinking—­a little—­of your side of things.”

“The law does not prevent me from doing as I like,” she replied.  It was agony that showed on his face at this.

“That demands as much from me, if I play fair with you,” he said slowly.  “Suppose there was some sort of law that held me back?”

“I have not observed any vast restraint in you!”

“Not at first.  Haven’t you gained any better opinion?”

She was one of those able to meet a question with silence.  He was obliged to continue.

“Suppose I should tell you that, all the time I was talking to you about what I felt, there was a wall, a great wall, for ever between us?”

“In that case, I should regret God had made a man so forgetful of honor.  I should be glad Heaven had left me untouched by anything such a man could say.  Suppose that?—­Why, suppose I had cared, and that I had found after all that there was no hope?  There comes in conscience, Sir, there comes in honor.”