ness in his blood had driven him whither it listed. There had been
no depths to which he had not sunk, no wild living from which he had
recoiled.

And then had come the news of June's death. Not tenderly conveyed, but
charged to his account by her sister with a fierce bitterness that
had suddenly torn the veil from his eyes. Followed days and nights of
agonised remorse, and after that the slow, steady, infinitely difficult
climb back from the depths into which he had allowed himself to sink
to a plane of life where, had June still lived, he would not have been
ashamed to meet her eyes nor utterly unworthy to take her hand.

"It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," he ended. "But she would
have wished it. I can never tell her now how I regret, never ask her
forgiveness. And this was the only thing I could do to atone."

Gillian's eyes were very soft as she answered:

"I expect she knows, Dan, and is glad."

After a moment she went on thoughtfully.

"It's rather the same kind of feeling that has driven Magda into a
sisterhood, I think--the desire to do something definite, something
tangible, as a sort of reparation. And a woman is much more limited that
way than a man."

Storran's mouth hardened. Any mention of Magda would bring that look of
concentrated hardness into his face, and as the months went on, giving
Gillian a closer insight into the man, she began to realise that he
had never forgiven Magda for her share in the ruin of his life. On this
point he was as hard as nether millstone. He even seemed to derive a
certain satisfaction from the knowledge that she was paying, and paying
heavily, for all the harm she had wrought.

It troubled Gillian--this incalculable hardness in Dan's nature
towards one woman. She found him kindly and tolerant in his outlook
on life--with the understanding tolerance of the man who has dragged
himself out of the pit by his own sheer force of will, and who, knowing
the power of temptation, is ready to give a helping hand to others who
may have fallen by the way. So that his relentlessness towards Magda was
the more inexplicable.

More than once she tried to soften his attitude, tried to make him
realise something of the conflicting influences both of temperament and
environment which had helped to make Magda what she was. But he remained
stubbornly unmoved.

"No punishment is too severe for a woman who has done what Magda
Vallincourt has done. She has wrecked lives simpl