h, you're making it so hard for me!" she said imploringly.
"Please go--go, now!"

Instead, he caught her in his arms, holding her crushed against his
breast.

"No, I'm not going. Oh, Nan--little Nan that I love! I can't give you
up again. Beloved!--Soul of me!" And all the love and longing,
against which he had struggled unavailingly throughout those empty
months of separation, came pouring from his lips in a torrent of
passionate pleading that shook her heart.

With an effort she tore herself free--wrenched herself away from the
arms whose clasp about her body thrilled her from head to foot.
Somewhere in one of the cells of her brain she was conscious of a
perfectly clear understanding of the fact that she must be quite mad to
fight for escape from the sole thing in life she craved. Celia Mallory
didn't really count--nor Roger and her pledge to him. . . . They were
only shadows. What counted was Peter's love for her and hers for
him. . . . Yet in a curious numbed way she felt she must still defer
to those shadows. They stood like sentinels with drawn swords at the
gate of happiness, and she would never be able to get past them. So it
was no use Peter's staying here.

"You must go, Peter!" she exclaimed feverishly. "You must go!"

A new look sprang into his eyes--a sudden, terrible doubt and
questioning.

"You want me to go?"

"Yes--yes!" She turned away, gesturing blindly in the direction of the
door. The room seemed whirling round her. "I--I _want_ you to go!"

Then she felt his hand on her shoulder and, yielding to its insistent
pressure, she faced him again.

"Nan, is it because you've ceased to care that you tell me to go?" He
spoke very quietly, but there was something in the tense, hard-held
tones before which she blenched--a note of intolerable fear.

Her shaking hands went up to her face. It would be better if he
thought that of her--better for him, at least. For her, nothing
mattered any more.

"Don't ask me, Peter!" she gasped, sobbingly. "Don't ask me!"

Slowly his hand fell away from her shoulder.

"Then it's true? You don't care? Trenby has taken my place?"

A heavy silence dropped between them, broken only by the sullen roll of
thunder. Nan shivered a little. Her face was still hidden in her
hands. She was struggling with herself--trying to force from her lips
the lie which would send the man's reeling faith in her crashing to
earth and drive him from her for ever.