tell her."

"I will--if you say I must. But she won't forgive me easily."

"I think she will. I think she'll understand just what made you do it.
So now we'll go back to Friars' Holm together."

An hour later Storran came slowly downstairs from the little room where
he and Magda had met again for the first time since that moonlight night
at Stockleigh--met, not as lovers, but as a man and woman who have
each sinned and each learned, out of their sinning, how to pardon and
forgive.

Storran was very quiet and grave when presently he found himself alone
with Gillian.

"We men will never understand women," he said. "There's an angel hidden
away somewhere in every one of you." His mouth curved into a smile,
half-sad, half-whimsical. "I've just found Magda's."

Lady Arabella and Gillian, both feeling rather like conspirators, waited
anxiously for a reply to the former's letter to Quarrington. But none
came. The time slipped by until a fortnight had elapsed, and with the
passage of each day their hearts sank lower.

Neither of them believed that Michael would have utterly disregarded
the letter, had he received it, but they feared that it might have
miscarried, or that he might be travelling and so not receive it in
time to prevent Magda's carrying out her avowed intention of becoming a
working member of the sisterhood.

Even though she knew now that at least June Storran's death need no
longer be added to her account, she still adhered to her decision. As
she had told Dan with a weary simplicity: "I'm glad. But it won't make
any difference--to Michael and me. Too much water has run under the
bridge. Love that is dead doesn't come to life again."

Each day was hardening her resolve, and both Lady Arabella and
Gillian--those two whose unselfish happiness was bound up in her
own--were beginning to realise that it would be a race against time
if she was to be saved from taking a step that would divide her from
Michael as long as they both should live.

At the end of a fortnight Gillian, driven to desperation, despatched a
telegram to his Paris address: "Did you receive communication from Lady
Arabella?" But it shared the fate of the letter, failing to elicit any
reply. She allowed sufficient time to elapse to cover any ordinary delay
in transit, then, unknown to Magda, taxied down to the house in Park
Lane.

"I want you to invite Magda to stay with you, please," she informed Lady
Arabella abruptly.

"Of cour