sides,
slowly clenched. All the anguish of thwarting, the torture of a man
who knows that the woman he loves will be another man's wife, found
utterance in that one short word. Nan shivered at the stark agony in
his tone. She did not attempt to answer him. There was nothing she
could say. She could only stand voiceless and endure the pain-racked
silence which followed.

It seemed to her that an infinity of time dragged by before he spoke
again. When he did, it was in quiet, level tones out of which every
atom of emotion had been crushed.

"You were pledged to Trenby," he said slowly. "That was different. I
couldn't ask you to break your pledge to him, even had I been free to
do so. You were his, not mine. . . . But you had given no promise to
Maryon Rooke."

The incalculable reproach and accusation of those last words seemed to
burn their way right into her heart. In a flash of revelation the
whole thing became clear to her. She saw how bitterly she had failed
the man she loved in that mad moment when she had thrown up everything
and gone away with Maryon.

Dimly she acquiesced in the fact that there were excuses to be
made--the long strain of the preceding months, her illness, leaving her
with weakened nerves, and, finally, Roger's outrageous behaviour in the
studio that day. But of these she would not speak to Peter. Had he
not saved her from herself she would have wrecked her whole life by
now, and she felt that, to him, she could not make excuses--however
valid they might be.

She had failed him utterly--failed in that faithfulness of the spirit
without which love is no more than a sex instinct. She knew it must
appear like this to him, although deep within herself she was conscious
that it was not really so. In her heart there was a white flame that
would burn only for Peter--an altar flame which nothing could touch or
defile. And the men who loved her knew it. It was this, the knowledge
that the inmost soul and spirit of her eluded him, which had kept
Roger's jealous anger at such a dangerous pitch.

"There is only one thing." Peter was speaking again, still in the same
curiously detached tones as before. It was almost as though he were
discussing the affairs of someone else--affairs which did not concern
him very vitally. "There's only one more thing to be said. You've
made it easier for me to do--what I have to do."

"What you have to do?" she repeated.

"Yes. I've had a cable f