anxiously. "See, I have nothing in my
hands. I almost think that the desire has gone. You remember the little
stiletto I had last night? To-day I threw it into the well. Mrs. Unthank
was very angry with me."

"I am not afraid," he assured her, "but--"

"Ah, but you will not scold me?" she begged. "It is the storm which
terrifies me."

He drew a low chair for her into the little circle of light and arranged
some cushions. As she sank into it, she suddenly looked up at him and
smiled, a smile of rare and wonderful beauty. Dominey felt for a moment
something like the stab of a knife at his heart.

"Sit here and rest," he invited. "There is nothing to fear."

"In my heart I know that," she answered simply. "These storms are part
of our lives. They come with birth, and they shake the world when death
seizes us. One should not be afraid, but I have been so ill, Everard.
Shall I call you Everard still?"

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because you are not like Everard to me any more," she told him,
"because something has gone from you, and something has come to you. You
are not the same man. What is it? Had you troubles in Africa? Did you
learn what life was like out there?"

He sat looking at her for a moment, leaning back in his chair, which
he had pushed a few feet into the shadows. Her hair was glossy and
splendid, and against it her skin seemed whiter and more delicate than
ever. Her eyes were lustrous but plaintive, and with something of the
child's fear of harm in them. She looked very young and very fragile to
have been swayed through the years by an evil passion.

"I learnt many things there, Rosamund," he told her quietly. "I learnt
a little of the difference between right doing and wrongdoing. I learnt,
too, that all the passions of life burn themselves out, save one alone."

She twisted the girdle of her dressing-gown in her fingers for a
moment. His last speech seemed to have been outside the orbit of her
comprehension or interest.

"You need not be afraid of me any more, Everard," she said, a little
pathetically.

"I have no fear of you," he answered.

"Then why don't you bring your chair forward and come and sit a little
nearer to me?" she asked, raising her eyes. "Do you hear the wind, how
it shrieks at us? Oh, I am afraid!"

He moved forward to her side, and took her hand gently in his. Her
fingers responded at once to his pressure. When he spoke, he scarcely
recognised his own voice. It seemed to him