Page:The Bondman; A New Saga (IA bondmannewsaga00cain).djvu/172

 her pole-star. What was Jason's? Only the blankness of despair.

"Oh! my heart will break," she cried. "Jason," she cried again, and again she grasped his hands, and again their eyes met, and then the brave girl put her quivering lips to his.

"Ah, no," he said in a husky voice, and he broke from her embrace.

from every human face, Jason turned in his dumb despair towards the sea, for the moan of its long dead waves seemed to speak to him in a voice of comfort if not of cheer. The year had deepened to autumn, and the chill winds that scattered the salt spray, the white curves of the breakers, the mists, the dapple-grey clouds, the scream of the sea-fowl, all suited with his mood, for at the fountains of his own being the great deeps were broken up.

It was Tuesday, and every day thereafter until Saturday he haunted the shore, the wild headland to seaward, and the lonesome rocks on the south. There bit by bit the strange and solemn idea of unrequited love was borne in upon him. It was very hard to understand. For one short day the image of a happy love had stood up before his mind, but already that day was dead. That he should never again clasp her hand whom he loved, that all was over between them—it was painful, it was crushing.

And oh! it was very cruel. His life seemed as much ended as if he had taken his death-warrant, for life without hope was nothing worth. The future he had fondly built up for both of them lay broken at his own feet. Oh, the irony of it all! There were moments when evil passions arose in his mind and startled him. Standing at the foot of the lone crags of the sea he would break into wild peals of laughter, or shriek out in rebellion against his sentence. But he was ashamed of these impulses, and would slink away from the scene of them, though no human ear had heard him, like a dog that is disgraced.

Yet he felt that like a man among men he could fight anything but this relentless doom. Anything, anything—and he would not shrink. Life and love, life and love—only these, and all