ith relish:

"Roger Trenby will be wishin' Isobel Carson back home! I hear Lady
Gertrude keeps him dancing attendance on her from morn till night,
declaring she's at death's door the while."

Sandy grinned.

"Yes, Roger 'phoned an hour ago and asked to speak to you, Nan--he'd
heard you were staying here. I said you were taking a nap."

Nan smiled faintly across at him.

"Thank you, Sandy," she said. She had no wish either to see or speak
to Roger just now. There was something that must be fought out and
decided before he and she met again.

Aunt Eliza bustled her off early to bed that night and she went
thankfully--not to sleep, but to search out her own soul and make the
biggest decision of her life.

It was not till the moon-pale fingers of dawn came creeping in through
the chinks betwixt blind and window that Nan lay back on her pillows
knowing that for good or ill she had taken her decision.

Something of the immensity of love, its heights and depths, had been
revealed to her in those tense silences she had shared with Peter, and
she knew that she had been untrue to the love within her--untrue from
the very beginning when she had first pledged herself to Roger.

She had rushed headlong into her engagement with him, driven by
cross-currents that had whirled her hither and thither. Afterwards,
when the full realisation of her love for Peter had overwhelmed her,
her pride--the dogged, unyielding pride of the Davenants, whose word
was their bond--had held her to her promise.

It had been a matter of honour with her. Now she was learning that
utter loyalty to love involved a higher, finer honour than a spoken
pledge given by a reckless girl who had thought to find safety for
herself and happiness for her friend by giving it.

For Peter, that faithfulness of the spirit, of which he had spoken,
alone was possible. The woman he had married had her claims upon him.
But as far as she herself was concerned, Nan realised that she could
yet keep her love pure and untouched, faithful to the mystic three-fold
bond of spirit, soul, and body.

. . . She would never marry Roger now. To-morrow she would write and
tell him so. That he would storm and rage and try to force her to
retract this new decision she was well aware. But that would only be
part of the punishment which she must be prepared to suffer. There
would, too, be a certain amount of obloquy and gossip to be faced.
People in general would say she