beneath the pressure,
he had said savagely:

"By God, Nan! I'll make you love me--or break you!"

Nan turned back her sleeve and looked at the red weals now darkening
into a bruise which his grasp had made on the white skin of her arm.
Then she re-read the letter in her hand. It bore yesterday's date and
was very brief.

"I'm hoping to get out of town very soon now, and I propose to come
down and inspect my new property with a view to re-decorating the
house. I could never live with dear godfather's Early Victorian chairs
and tables! So you may expect to see me almost any day now on the
doorstep of Mallow Court.

"Yours as always.

"MARYON."

Nan's first impulse was to beg him not to come. She had screwed up her
courage to fulfil her pledge to marry Roger, and she felt that the
presence in the neighbourhood of Maryon--Maryon with his familiar charm
and attraction, and his former love for her intensified by losing
her--might be a somewhat disturbing factor.

Looking out over the sea, she smiled to think how futile Maryon's charm
would be to touch her if she were going to marry Peter Mallory. She
would have no wish even to see him. But yesterday's scene with Roger
had increased her fear and dread of her coming marriage, and she was
conscious of a captive's longing for one more taste of freedom, for one
more meeting with the man who had played a big part in the old Bohemian
life she had loved so well.

For long she hesitated how to answer Maryon's letter, sitting there on
the seaward wall, her chin cupped in her hand. Should she write and
ask him to postpone his visit? Or reply just as though she were
expecting him? At last her decision was taken. She tore up his letter
and, strolling to the edge of the cliff, tossed the pieces into the
sea. She would send no answer at all, leaving it to the shuttle of
fate to weave the next strand in her life.

And a week later Maryon Rooke came down to take possession of his new
domain.

"I can take six clear weeks now," he told Nan. "That's better than my
first plan of week-ending down here. I have been working hard since
you blew into my studio one good day, and now for six weeks I toil not,
neither do I spin. Unless." he added suddenly, "I paint a portrait of
you while I'm here!"

Nan glanced at him delightedly.

"I should love it. Only you won't paint my soul, will you, Maryon, as
you did Mrs. T. Van Decken's?"

His eyes narrowed a little.

"