The beautiful face with its mournful tender eyes told little of the fierce agony that seemed consuming her, as she gazed into the beloved countenance for the last time.

“Good-bye, Mr. Palma.  I have no words to thank you for all your care and goodness.”

“Is that all, Lily?  Years ago, when I left you at the parsonage, looking as if your little heart would break, you said, ’I will pray for you every night.’  Now you leave me without a tear and with no promise to remember me.”

Tenderly his low voice appealed to her heart, as he bent his head so close that his hair swept across her brow.

She raised the hand that held hers, suddenly kissed it with an overwhelming passionate fervour, and holding it against her cheek, murmured almost in a whisper: 

“God knows I have never ceased to pray for you, and, Mr. Palma, as long as I live, come what may to both of us, I shall never fail in my prayers for you.”

She dropped his hand, and covered her face with her own.

He stretched his arms toward her, all his love in his fine eyes, so full of a strange tenderness, a yearning to possess her entirely, but he checked himself, and, taking one of the hands, led her to the door.  Upon the threshold she rallied, and looked up: 

“Good-bye, Mr. Palma.”

He drew her close to his side, unconscious that he pressed her fingers so tight that the small points of the diamonds cut into the flesh.

“God bless you, Lily.  Think of me sometimes.”

They looked in each other’s eyes an instant, and she walked away.  He turned and closed the door, and she heard the click of the lock inside.  Blind and tearless, like one staggering from a severe blow, she reached her own room, and fell heavily across the foot of her bed.

Through the long hours of that night she lay motionless, striving to hush the moans of her crushed heart, and wondering why such anguish as hers was not fatal.  Staring at the wall, she could not close her eyes, and the only staff that supported her in the ordeal was the consciousness that she had fought bravely, had not betrayed her humiliating secret.

Toward dawn she rose, and opened her window.  The sleet had ceased, and the carriage was standing before the door.  An impulse she could not resist drove her out into the hall, to catch one more glimpse of the form so precious to her.  She heard a door open on the hall beneath, and recognized her guardian’s step.  He paused, and she heard him talking to his stepmother, bidding her adieu.  His last words were deep and gentle in their utterance.

“Be very tender and patient with Olga.  Wounds like hers heal slowly.  Take good care of my ward.  God bless you all.”

Descending the steps she saw him distinctly, enveloped in an overcoat buttoned so close that it showed the fine proportions of his tall figure; and as he stopped to light his cigar at a gas globe which a bronze Atalanta held in a niche half way up the stairs, his nobly formed head and gleaming forehead impressed itself for ever on her memory.