"I only want your love," she said.

"If you've taken that away from me, nothing else counts." He gave a sort of groan.

Her persistence was appalling, her courage an indescribable reproach.

For a moment he remained silent, with a drawn face and twitching fingers, strangely white and wasted, like a man who had been through an illness,--a caricature of the once easy-going Gilbert Palgrave, the captain of his fate and the master of his soul.
"All right then," he said, "if you must know, you shall, but do me the credit to remember that I did my best to leave things vague and blurred." He took her by the elbow and put her into a chair.

With a touch of his old thoughtfulness and rather studied politeness he chose one that was untouched by the sun that came low over the dune.