ig and little ways in which a man--even if he was only a staunch
man-friend--can shield and help a woman.

It seemed as though Dan Storran always contrived to interpose his big
person betwixt her and the sharp corners of life, and she began to
wonder, with a faint, indefinable dread, what must become of their
friendship when Magda returned to Friars' Holm. Feeling as he did
towards the dancer, it would be impossible for him to come there any
more, and somehow a snatched hour here and there--a lunch together, or
a motor-spin into the country--would be a very poor substitute for his
almost daily visits to the old Queen Anne house tucked away behind its
high walls at Hampstead.

Once she broached the subject to him rather diffidently.

"My dear"--he had somehow dropped into the use of the little term of
endearment, and Gillian found that she liked it and knew that she would
miss it if it were suddenly erased from his speech--"my dear, why cross
bridges till we come to them? Perhaps, when the time comes, there'll be
no bridge to cross."

Gillian glanced at him swiftly.

"Do you mean that she--that you're feeling less bitter towards her,
Dan?" she asked eagerly.

He smiled down at her whimsically.

"I don't quite know. But I know one thing--it's very difficult to be a
lot with you and keep one's anger strictly up to concert pitch."

Gillian made no answer. She was too wise--with that intuitive wisdom of
woman--to force the pace. If Dan were beginning to relent ever so little
towards Magda--why, then, her two best friends might yet come together
in comradeship and learn to forget the bitter past. The gentle hand
of Time would be laid on old wounds and its touch would surely bring
healing. But Gillian would no more have thought of trying to hasten
matters than she would have tried to force open the close-curled petals
of a flower in bud.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE RETURN

Magda slipped through the tall doorway in the wall which marked the
abode of the Sisters of Penitence and stood once more on the pavement of
the busy street. The year was over, and just as once before the clicking
of the latch had seemed to signify the end of everything, so now it
sounded a quite different note--of new beginnings, of release--freedom!

Three months prior to the completion of her allotted span at the
sisterhood Magda had had a serious attack of illness. The hard and
rigorous life had told upon her physically, while the unaccustomed