t her back?"

He shifted his position slightly so that the smoke of his cigarette did
not float in her direction. His smile had a whimsical twist. "Do I want
her back?" he said. "On my oath, it's hard to tell."

"Oh, surely!" Maud said. She rose impulsively and stood beside him.
"Charlie," she said, "why do you wear a mask with me? Do you think I
don't know that she is all the world to you?"

He looked at her, and the twisted smile went from his face. "There is
no woman on this earth that I can't do without," he said. "I learnt
that--when I lost you."

"Ah!" Maud's voice was very pitiful. Her hand came to his. "But
this--this is different. Why should you do without her? You know she
loves you?"

His fingers closed spring-like about her own. A certain hardness was in
his look. "If she loves me," he said, "she can come back to me of her own
accord."

"But if she is afraid?" Maud pleaded.

"She has no reason to be," he said. "I have claimed nothing from her. I
have never spoken a harsh word to her. Why is she afraid?"

"Have you understood her?" Maud asked very gently.

He made an abrupt movement as though the question, notwithstanding the
absolute kindness of its utterance, had somehow an edge for him. The next
moment he began to laugh.

"Why ask these impossible riddles? Has any man ever understood a
woman? Let us dismiss the subject! And since you are here, _ma belle
reine_,--you of all people--let us celebrate the occasion with a
drink!--even if it be only tea!"

His eyes laughed into hers. The western light was streaming in across the
music-room. They stood together in the turret beyond Saltash's piano,
where she had found him pouring out wild music that made her warm heart
ache for him.

She had come to him with the earnest desire to help, but he baffled her
at every turn, this man to whom once in the days of her youth she had
been so near. She could not follow the complex workings of his mind. He
was too quick to cover his feelings. His inner soul had long been hidden
from her.

Yet the conviction persisted that if any could pass that closed door that
he kept so persistently against all comers, it would be herself. She had
once possessed the key, and she could not believe that it was no longer
in her power to turn it. He would surely yield to her though he barred
out all beside.

Perhaps he read her thoughts, for the laugh died out of his eyes, melting
into the old tender raillery that she remembe