He turned when he had gone three paces and came back. The girl was still standing by the parapet, but she had averted her face towards the wintry waters. His step seemed to fall on deaf ears, and he stood beside her before she looked towards him.
Passion had broken down his awkwardness. He asked the old question with a shaking voice. "Alice," he said, "have I vexed you?"
She turned to him a pale, distraught face, her eyes brimming over with the sorrow of love, the passionate adventurous longing which claims true hearts for ever.
He caught her in his arms, his heart in a glory of joy.
"Oh, Alice, darling," he cried. "What has happened to us? I love you, I love you, and you have never given me a chance to say it."
She lay passive in his arms for one brief minute and then feebly drew back.
"Sweetheart," he cried. "Sweetheart! For I will call you sweetheart, though we never meet again. You are mine, Alice. We cannot help ourselves."
The girl stood as in a trance, her eyes caught and held by his face.
"Oh, the misery of things," she said half-sobbing. "I have given my soul to another, and I knew it was not mine to give. Why, oh why, did you not speak to me sooner? I have been hungering for you and you never came."
A sense of his folly choked him.
"And I have made you suffer, poor darling! And the whole world is out of joint for us!"
The hopeless feeling of loss, forgotten for a moment, came back to him. The girl was gone from him for ever, though a bridge of hearts should always cross the chasm of their severance.
"I am going away," he said, "to make reparation. I have my repentance to work out, and it will be bitterer than yours, little woman. Ours must be an austere love."
She looked at him till her pale face flushed and a sad exultation woke in her eyes.
"You will never forget?" she asked wistfully, confident of the answer.
"Forget!" he cried. "It is my only happiness to remember. I am going away to be knocked about, dear. Wild, rough work, but with a man's chances!"
For a moment she let another thought find harbour in her mind. Was the past irretrievable, the future predetermined? A woman's word had an old right to be broken. If she went to him, would not he welcome her gladly, and the future might yet be a heritage for both?