Dolly Fenwick will invite you to play golf with
her."

"Do not turn my head," he begged.

"All the same," Philippa continued, more gravely, "I shall never have
a moment's peace whilst you are in the place. I was thinking about you
last night. I don't believe I have ever realised before how terrible it
would be if you really were discovered. What would they do to you?"

"Whatever they might do," he replied, a little wearily, "I must obey
orders. My orders are to remain here, but even if I were told that I
might go, I should find it hard."

"Do you mean that?" she asked.

"I think you know," he answered.

"You men are so strange," she went on, after a moment's pause. "You give
us so little time to know you, you show us so little of yourselves and
you expect so much."

"We offer everything," he reminded her.

"I want to avoid platitudes," she said thoughtfully, "but is love quite
the same thing for a man as for a woman?"

"Sometimes it is more," was the prompt reply. "Sometimes love, for a
woman, means only shelter; often, for a man, love means the blending of
all knowledge, of all beauty, all ambition, of all that he has learned
from books and from life. Sometimes a man can see no further and needs
to look no further."

Philippa suddenly felt that she was in danger. There was something in
her heart of which she had never before been conscious, some music, some
strange turn of sentiment in Lessingham's voice or the words themselves.
It was madness, she told herself breathlessly. She was in love with
her husband, if any one. She could not have lost all feeling for him so
soon. She clasped her hands tightly. Lessingham seemed conscious of his
advantage, and leaned towards her.

"If I were not offering you my whole life," he pleaded, "believe me, I
would not open my lips. If I were thinking of episodes, I would throw
myself into the sea before I asked you to give me even your fingers. But
you, and you alone, could fill the place in my life which I have always
prayed might be filled, not for a year or even a decade of years, but
for eternity."

"Oh, but you forget!" she faltered.

"I remember so much," he replied, "that I know it is hard for you to
speak. There are bonds which you have made sacred, and your
fingers shrink from tearing them asunder. If it were not for this,
Philippa--hear the speech of a renegade--my mandate should be torn in
pieces. My instructions should flutter into the waste-paper basket,