e step unsteadily. He
stopped for a second, bracing his shoulders; then he walked firmly
across the room. While his hand was on the handle, he heard Mr. Le
Mesurier speaking.

'What do you mean to tell her?'

'I hardly understand,' he answered, turning round. 'There surely is but
one thing to say--the truth. She has a right to know that.'

'Has she? The engagement was broken off finally when Gorley left England.
They had nothing more to do with one another, no common interests, no
common future. Has she?'

'It seems to me, yes!'

'We have kept the knowledge from her up till now. No one could blame you
if you kept it from her a little longer.'

The argument smacked of sophistry to Drake. He had an unreasoned
conviction that the girl had a right to learn the truth from him.

'I think I ought to tell her if she asks me.'

'I might forbid you to do it,' grumbled Mr. Le Mesurier.

'Do you?' asked Drake. The question brought Mr. Le Mesurier up short. It
was a direct question, inviting a responsible decision, and Mr. Le
Mesurier was averse by nature to making such decisions out of hand. If
Drake cared for Clarice, he reflected, it was really in Drake's province
to decide the point rather than in his own.

'I don't know enough of you,' he replied, 'to either forbid or give you
permission.'

Drake wondered what the sentence meant.

'In that case I must take my own course,' he said, and he went out of the
room and mounted the stairs.

CHAPTER VI

It was the dusk of a February afternoon. Drake had found the lamps lit in
Mr. Le Mesurier's library, and the gas was burning in the hall and on the
stairs. But within the drawing-room all the light there was came from the
fire leaping upon the hearth and from the two recessed windows which
faced it. In the farthest of these windows Drake saw Miss Le Mesurier
standing, the outline of her face relieved, as it were, against a gray
panel of twilight. As the door closed, she turned and took a step into
the room. Drake could no longer see more than the shape of her head and
the soft waves of hair crowning it; he could not distinguish a single
feature, but none the less, as she stood facing him, he felt of a sudden
his heart sink within him and his whole strength race out of his body.

Clarice stood still; and he became possessed with a queer longing that
she would move again, forwards, within the focus of the firelight.
However, she spoke from where she stood.

'Yo