g the interminable moment when Garth crossed the room to her
side, she was supremely aware of an absurd desire to turn and flee, and
it was only by a sheer effort of will that she held her ground.

The next moment he had shaken hands with her and was making some
tranquil observation upon the lateness of his arrival. His manner was
quite detached, every vestige of anything beyond mere conventional
politeness banished from it.

The coolly neutral inflections of his voice struck upon Sara's keyed-up
consciousness as an indifferent finger may twang the stretched strings
of a violin, producing a shuddering violation of their harmony.

She hardly knew how she answered him. She only knew, with a sudden
overwhelming certainty, that the Garth who stood beside her now was a
different man, altered out of all kinship with the man who had held
her in his arms on Devil's Hood Island. The lover was gone; only the
acquaintance remained.

She stammered a few halting words by way of response, and--was she
mistaken, or did a sudden look of understanding, almost, it seemed, of
compunction, leap for a moment into his eyes, only to be replaced by the
brooding, bitter indifference habitual to them?

The opportune return of Audrey and her other guests, heralded by a gust
of cheerful laughter, tided over the difficult moment, and Garth turned
away to make his apologies to his hostess, blaming some slight mishap to
his car for the tardiness of his appearance.

Throughout lunch Sara conversed mechanically, responding like an
automaton when any one put a penny in the slot by asking her a question.
She felt utterly bewildered, stunned by Garth's behaviour.

Had their meeting been exchanged under the observant eyes of the rest of
the party, it would have been intelligible to her, for he was the last
man in the world to wear his heart upon his sleeve. But they had been
quite alone for the moment, and yet he had permitted no acknowledgment
of the new relations between them to appear either in word or look. He
had greeted her precisely as though they were no more to each other than
the merest acquaintances--as though the happenings of the previous day
had been wiped out of his mind. It was incomprehensible!

Sara felt almost as if some one had dealt her a physical blow, and it
required all her pluck and poise to enable her to take her share of the
general conversation before wending their several ways homeward.

". . . And we'll picnic on Devi