Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/70

 me, Herrick. You may do anything to me if I can only go home for just some days.... You may do anything...."

"I don't want to do anything, Hesther. No one wishes to do you any harm. But whatever my father wishes that every one must do. It has always been so."

She seemed to be seized by an absolute frenzy of fear; Harkness could see her white shadow quivering. It appeared to him as though she caught the man by the arm. Her voice came in little breathless stifled cries, infinitely pitiful to hear.

"Please, please, Herrick. I dare not speak to your father. I don't dare. I don't dare. But you—let me go—Oh! let me go—just this once, Herrick. Only this once. I'll only be home for a few days and then I'll come back. Truly I'll come back. I'll just see father and Bobby and then I'll come back. They'll be missing me. I know they will. And I'll be going to a foreign country—such a long way. And they'll be wanting me. Bobby's so young, Herrick, only a baby. He's never had any one to do anything for him but me...."

"You should have thought of that before you married me, you cannot leave me now."

"I won't leave you. I've never broken my word to any one. I won't break it now. It's only for a few days."

"How can you be so selfish, Hesther, as to want