privately, and feeling always that you could never be mine. It would be a
constant torture. Here is a possibility--a very remote one, I admit, but
still a possibility--and even if it fails I shall have the satisfaction of
knowing that I have done all that a man could do to win you."

"I think it is best that you should go somewhere, Harry, but Peru seems to
be a horrible place." "Barnett speaks of it in high terms. You know he
was four or five years out there. He describes the people as being
delightful, and he has nothing to say against the climate."

"I will not try to dissuade you," she said bravely after a pause. "At
present I am hopeless, but I shall have something to hope and pray for
while you are away. We will say good-bye now, dear. I have come to meet
you this once, but I will not do so again, another meeting would but give
us fresh pain. I am very glad to know that your brother is going with you.
I shall not have to imagine that you are ill in some out-of-the-way place
without a friend near you; and in spite of the dangers you may have to
run, I would rather think of you as bravely doing your best than eating
your heart out here in London. I shall not tell my father that we have met
here; you had better write to him and say that you are leaving London at
once, and that you hope in two years to return and claim me in accordance
with his promise. I am sure he will be glad to know that you have gone,
and that we shall not be constantly meeting. He will be kinder to me than
he has been of late, for as he will think it quite impossible that you can
make a fortune in two years he will be inclined to dismiss you altogether
from his mind."

For another half-hour they talked together, and then they parted with
renewed protestations on her part that nothing should induce her to break
her promise to wait for him for two years. He had given her the address of