oved to the door, Eric rose and opened it,
gathering up his overcoat with the other hand. They had parted like this
so often that he no longer seemed to care. . . . A four-wheeler was
ambling along Ryder Street, and he hailed it. Neither spoke until it
drew up opposite her house and she saw him fumbling with the handle.
Then she laid her fingers on his wrist and chokingly bade him stop.

"I'll marry you, Eric," she said.

"Thank you, Barbara."

She hurried out before he could kiss her and stood with face upturned
and eyes tightly shut. God, who had heard the oath taken and broken, was
free to strike her now; if He held His hand, it was because He had more
subtle punishment in store. . . .

Barbara pulled her cloak over her chest and ran despairingly into the
house.

* * * * *

"_Loneliness may be so intolerable that I believe God would forgive
us our blindest groping after alleviation. But would God forgive me,
if, in my groping, I brought such misery of loneliness to another,
knowing now what manner of thing it is?_"--From the Diary of Eric
Lane.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE STRONGEST THING OF ALL

"Tam saepe nostrum decipi Fabullinum
Miraris, Aule? Semper homo bonus tiro est."
MARTIAL.

1

"_If you care for a six-months' lecturing tour in America_," wrote
Grierson, "_I have an unrivalled offer. You would start in the New
Year_. . . ."

His agent's letter was the first that Eric opened on the morning after
Barbara promised to marry him. As he lay half-awake, waiting to be
called, he realized that something had changed the foundations of his
life; he was at peace, well and strong, with a heart tuned for adventure
and a new tireless energy.

Six o'clock. . . . Seven. . . . Eight. . . . He carried the telephone
into the smoking-room, lest he should be tempted to disturb Barbara, and
paced bare-foot up and down, wondering how to inaugurate the new life.
In marrying a Protestant, she would forfeit the money which she had
received under her god-father's will; henceforward he must work and earn
for two. In his safe lay a brown-paper parcel containing the manuscript
of a novel, unopened since the day when Gaisford so contumeliously flung
it back at him. Eric carried the despised book into his bedroom and
began to skim the pages. With his new sense of power, he would so
re-write it that the doctor should eat humble-pie; and there would be