icked a tender place.
"Very well," she said proudly. "Say what you like. It will make no
difference. But please understand that I admit none of this."

Nick's grin leapt goblin-like across his face and was gone. "I never
expected it of you," he told her coolly. "You would sooner die than
admit it, simply because it would be infinitely easier for you to die.
You will be false to yourself, false to Grange, false to me, rather
than lower that miserable little rag of pride that made you jilt me
at Simla. I didn't blame you so much then. You were only a child.
You didn't understand. But that excuse won't serve you now. You are a
woman, and you know what Love is. You don't call it by its name, but
none the less you know it."

He paused for an instant, for Muriel had made a swift gesture of
protest.

"I don't think you know what you are saying," she said, her voice very
low.

He sprang abruptly to his feet. "Yes," he said, speaking very rapidly.
"That's how you will trick yourself to your dying day. It's a way
women have. But it doesn't help them. It won't help you. For that
thing in your heart--the thing that is fighting for air--the thing
you won't own--the thing that drove you to Grange for protection--will
never die. That is why you are miserable. You may do what you will to
it, hide it, smother it, trample it. But it will survive for all that.
All your life it will be there. You will never forget it though you
will try to persuade yourself that it belongs to a dead past. All your
life,"--his voice vibrated suddenly, and the ever-shifting eyes blazed
into leaping flame--"all your life, you will remember that I was once
yours to take or to throw away. And--you wanted me, yet--you chose to
throw me away."

Fiercely he flung the words at her. There was nothing impersonal
about him now. He was vitally, overwhelmingly, in earnest. A deep
glow covered the parchment face. The man was as it were electrified by
passion.

And Muriel gazed at him as one gazing upon sudden disaster. What was
this, what was this, that he had said to her? He had rent the veil
aside for her indeed. But to what dread vision had he opened her eyes?

The old paralysing fear was knocking at her heart. She dreaded each
instant to see the devil leap out upon his face. But as the seconds
passed she realised that he was still his own master. He had flung
down the gauntlet, but he would go no further, unless she took it up.
And this she could not do. Sh