I will try to love
you as you deserve to be loved. It was only a fancy of mine that it would
be better for you to be free from all thoughts of me. I think it would
seem very hard to me to lose your love. I don't think I could bear that,
Gilbert."
She looked up at him with an appealing expression through her tears--an
innocent, half-childish look that went to his heart--and he clasped her
to his breast, believing that this proposal to set him free had been
indeed nothing more than a girlish caprice.
"My dearest, my life is bound up with your love," he said. "Nothing can
part us except your ceasing to love me."
CHAPTER VII.
"GOOD-BYE."
The hour for the final parting came at last, and Gilbert Fenton turned
his back upon the little gate by which he had watched Marian Nowell
standing upon that first summer Sunday evening which sealed his destiny.
He left Lidford weary at heart, weighed down by a depression he had
vainly struggled against, and he brooded over his troubles all the way
back to town. It seemed as if all the hopes that had made life so sweet
to him only a week ago had been swept away. He could not look beyond that
dreary Australian exile; he could not bring his thoughts to bear upon the
time that was to come afterwards, and which need be no less bright
because of this delay.
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