Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 3.djvu/150

140 "Now Gilbert, you must leave me—not this moment, but soon—and you must never come again."

"Never again, Helen? just when I love you more than ever!"

"For that very reason, if it so, we should not meet again. I thought this interview was necessary—at least, I persuaded myself it was so—that we might severally ask and receive each other's pardon for the past; but there can be no excuse for another. I shall leave this place, as soon as I have means to seek another asylum; but our intercourse must end here."

"End here!" echoed I; and approaching the high, carved chimney-piece, I leant my hand against its heavy mouldings, and dropped my forehead upon it in silent, sullen despondency.

"You must not come again," continued she. There was a slight tremour in her voice, but I thought her whole manner was provokingly composed, considering the dreadful sentence she pronounced. "You must know why I tell