days. "Do _you_ love me enough? Do you care--as he did?"

"No--not as he did. I've cared blindly, passionately--somehow we didn't
seem to meet on any other plane. In fact, it ... it was realising how
magnificently Lance cared ... and how little you seemed able to
appreciate the fact, that made me feel--as I did, down there. In a
sense, he's been barring the way ... ever since...."

"_Roy!_ How strange!" She faced him now, the mask of repression flung
aside. "It's been the same--with me!"

"With _you_?"

"Yes. Ever since I heard ... he was gone, he has haunted me to
distraction. I've seemed to see him and feel him in quite a different
way."

"Good Lord!" Roy murmured--incredulous, amazed. "Human beings _are_ the
queerest things. If only ... you'd felt like that ... sooner----?"

"Yes--if only I had----!" she lamented frankly, looking straight before
her.

"I'm glad--you told me," said her unaccountable lover.

"I nearly--didn't. But when you said that, I felt it might--ease things.
And that was his great wish--wasn't it?--to ease things ... for us both.
Oh--was there ever any one ... _quite_ like him?"

Tears stood in her eyes, and Roy contemplating her--seeing, for the
first time, something beyond her beauty--felt drawn to her in an
altogether new way; and sitting there they talked of him quietly, like
friends, rather than lovers on the verge of parting for good.

As real to them, almost, as themselves, was the spirit of the man who
had loved both more greatly than they were capable of loving one
another; who, in life, had refused to stand between them; yet, in death,
had subtly thrust them apart....

Then there came a pause. They remembered....

"We're rather a strange pair--of lovers," she murmured shakily. "I feel,
now, as if I can't bear letting you go. And yet ... it wouldn't
last.--Dearest, _will_ you be sensible ... and finish your tea?"

"No. It would choke me," he said with smothered passion. "If I've got to
go--I'm going."

He stood up, bracing his shoulders. She stood up also, confronting him.
Neither could see the other's face quite clear.

Then: "Only six weeks!" she said very low. "Roy--we ought to be ashamed
of ourselves."

"I am--heartily," he confessed. "I was never more so."

She was looking down now, twisting her ring. "I'm afraid ... I'm not
talented in that line. Somehow ... except for Lance, I can't regret it."
She slid the ring over her knuckle.

"Oh, _keep_ the beastly thin