"Promise
nothing. It would be unjust to--yourself, and
perhaps also to me; for a sacred promise is a
terrible thing, Ralph. Let us both remain free;
and, if you return and still love me, then come,
and I shall receive you and listen to you. And
even if you have outgrown your love, which is,
indeed, more probable, come still to visit me
wherever I may be, and we shall meet as friends
and rejoice in the meeting."
"You know best," he murmured. "Let it be
as you have said."
He arose, took her face between his hands,
gazed long and tenderly into her eyes, pressed
a kiss upon her forehead, and hastened away.
That night Ralph boarded the steamer for Hull,
and three weeks later landed in New York.
IV.
The first three months of Ralph's sojourn in
America were spent in vain attempts to obtain a
situation. Day after day he walked down
Broadway, calling at various places of business
and night after night he returned to his cheer-
less room with a faint heart and declining spirits.
It was, after all, a more serious thing than he
had imagined, to cut the cable which binds one
to the land of one's birth. There a hundred
subtile influences, the existence of which no one
suspects until the moment they are withdrawn,
unite to keep one in the straight path of rectitude,
or at least of external respectability; and
Ralph's life had been all in society; the opinion
of his fellow-men had been the one force to
which he implicitly deferred, and the conscience
by which he had been wont to test his actions
had been nothing but the aggregate judgment
of his friends.
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