face contracted with pain; he was no Don Juan, learned
in the byways of a woman's heart. Then, almost roughly, he caught her to
him, and she, looking up, saw a strange glowing look come over his
face--a look which was, even to her, an all-sufficing answer, for it
told of the baffled longing, of the abnegation, and, even now, of the
restraint and selflessness, of the man who loved her.

"Did you really think that, Peggy?" was all he said; then, more slowly,
as the arms about her relaxed their hold, "Why, my dear, you've always
been--you are--my life."

A sudden sob, a cry of joy broke from her. She sat up, and with a quick
passionate movement flung herself on his breast; slowly she raised her
face to his: "I love you," she whispered, "Laurence, I love you!"

His lips trembled for a moment on her closed eyelids, then sought and
found her soft, quivering mouth. But even then Vanderlyn's love was
reverent, restrained in its expression, yet none the less, perhaps the
more, a binding sacrament.

At last, "Why did you subject us," he said, huskily, "to such an ordeal?
What has made you give way--now? How can you dream of going back, after
a week, to our old life?" But even as he asked the searching questions,
he laid her back gently on her improvised couch.

Woman-like she did not give him a direct response, then, quite suddenly,
she yielded him the key to the mystery.

"Because, Laurence, the last time I was in England, something happened
which altered my outlook on life."

She uttered the words with strange solemnity, but Vanderlyn's ears were
holden; true, he heard her answer to his question, but the word conveyed
little or nothing to him.

He was still riding the whirlwind of his own poignant emotion; he was
telling himself, with voiceless and yet most binding oaths, that never,
never should the woman whose heart had just beaten against his heart,
whose lips had just trembled beneath his lips, go back to act the part
of even the nominal wife to Tom Pargeter. He would consent to any
condition imposed by her, as long as they could be together; surely even
she would understand, if not now, then later, that there are certain
moments which can never be obliterated or treated as if they have not
been....

It was with difficulty--with a feeling that he was falling from high
heaven to earth--that he forced himself to listen to her next words.

"As you know, I stayed, when in England, with Sophy Pargeter----"

Again s