"I could read the thought passing through her mind. It would not serve
for her to live beside them, visible to them each day. Sooner or later
they would come to grips. And then her face flushed as the notion of
her great sacrifice came to her.

"'I see but the one way,' she said. 'I will go into the house that
you, Robert, have built. Neither you nor John shall see me, but none
the less, I shall live between you, holding you apart, as my hands do
now. I give my life to you so truly that from this night no one shall
see my face. You, John, shall live on here at Merchant's Point.
Robert, you at your cottage, and every day you will bring me food and
water and leave it at my door.'

"The two men fell back shamefaced. They protested they would part and
put the world between them; but she would not trust them. I think,
too, the notion of her sacrifice grew on her as she thought of it. For
women are tenacious of sacrifice even as men are of revenge. And in
the end she had her way. That night Robert Lovyes nailed the boards
across the windows, and brought the door-key back to her; and that
night, twenty years ago, she crossed the threshold. No man has seen
her since. But, none the less, for twenty years she has lived between
the brothers, keeping them apart."

This was the story which Mr. Wyeth told me as we sat over our
pipes, and the next day I set off on my journey back to London. The
conclusion of the affair I witnessed myself. For a year later we
received a letter from Mr. Robert, asking that a large sum of money
should be forwarded to him. Being curious to learn the reason for his
demand, I carried the sum to Tresco myself. Mr. John Lovyes had died a
month before, and I reached the island on Mr. Robert's wedding-day.