"Come," she said, "let us continue our walk, and I will tell you what I have thought I should tell to no living being on earth."
And there, with tearless eyes and in a voice that never faltered, she told him the whole story of those three years on the island, omitting nothing, giving the outlines clearly and briefly, but with a vividness which burned the details on Charles' throbbing brain as if they had been branded with a hot iron.
"And now," she said, as she finished and turned to him, lifting her calm eyes to his pale and hopeless face, "now you will see why it is impossible that I should give you what you ask. My life was Claude's; I gave myself utterly to him. He suffered with me, he died for me; I have nothing left but his memory, but to that I shall be true till I die. My friend, do you understand _now_?"
He was on his knees before her. She gave him her hands unresistingly, and he laid his hot forehead against them for an instant. Then he looked up at her, and she saw that indeed he understood.
Her face, as she met his look, was full of an infinite tenderness and pity. Laying her hand gently on his head, she stooped and kissed him once upon the brow. The whole manner of the action was so austere, so full of the sadness and remoteness of one whom a vast, impassable gulf separates for ever from all human and familiar intercourse, that it told Charles more plainly than any words could have done, the hopelessness of his love. He bowed his head in silence a moment, then pressing his lips passionately to her hand, he rose and left her.
She never saw him again. When she realised that he was indeed gone, that the last link which bound her to her past was broken, she began to feel bitterly the utter loneliness of her lot. Alone in the world, without kith or kin; alone, without the possibility of ever unburdening her heart to any human being, the old madness which had stared her in the face on the Isle of Demons seemed about to return.
But she was to have a noble salvation. Her uncle's estates were now hers. The wars had left them poor, untilled, in a wretched condition. The peasants were starving, the ramparts of the castle were tumbling down, and robber bands were plundering what remained to her. A life of action was what she needed: her resolve was soon taken, and in less than a month she was on her way northward, taking with her a companion of her own rank who had consented to share her solitude.