r, and while she
hesitated she felt his blue eyes on her downcast face. "You can't judge
by me," she answered presently. "Only those who have been in chains know
the meaning of freedom."

"Are you free now?"

"Not entirely. Who is?"

He was looking at her more closely; and when at last she raised her
eyelashes and met his gaze, the lovely glow which gave her beauty its
look of October splendour suffused her features. Anger seized her in the
very moment that the colour rushed to her cheeks. Why should she blush
like a schoolgirl because of the way this man--or any man--looked at
her?

"Are you going to marry Benham?" he asked; and there was a note in his
voice which disturbed her in spite of herself. Though she denied
passionately his right to question her, she answered simply enough:
"Yes, I am going to marry him."

"Do you care for him?"

With an effort she turned her eyes away and looked beyond the green
stems and the white flowers of the narcissi in the window to the street
outside, where the shadows of the young leaves lay like gauze over the
brick pavement.

"If I didn't care do you think that I would marry him?" she asked in a
low voice. Through the open window a breeze came, honey-sweet with the
scent of narcissi, and she realized, with a start, that this early
spring was poignantly lovely and sad.

"Well, I wish I'd known you twenty years ago," said Vetch presently. "If
I'd had a woman like you to help me, I might have been almost anything.
Nobody knows better than I how much help a woman can be when she's the
right sort."

She tore her gaze from the sunshine beyond, from the beauty and the
wistfulness of April. What was there in this man that convinced her in
spite of everything that Benham had told her?

"Your wife has been dead a long time?" She spoke gently, for his tone
more than his words had touched her sympathy.

As soon as she asked the question, she realized that it was a mistake.
An expressionless mask closed over his face, and she received the
impression that he had withdrawn to a distance.

"A long time," was all he answered. His voice had become so impersonal
that it was toneless.

"Well, it hasn't kept you back--not having help," she hastened to reply
as naturally as she could. "You are almost everything you wished to be
in the world, aren't you?" It was a foolish speech, she felt, but the
change in his manner had surprised and bewildered her.

He laughed shortly without merrim