very respectable aren't
they?--the Mainwarings, I mean?"

Vane looked at her gravely. "Don't speak for a bit. I'll get you
another glass of champagne. . . ."

But Joan rose. "I don't want it," she said. "Take me somewhere where
we can talk." She laid the tips of her fingers on his arm. "Talk, my
friend, for the last time. . . ."

"I'm damned if it is," he muttered between his clenched teeth.

She made no answer; and in silence he found two chairs in a secluded
corner behind a screen.

"So you went down in the 'Connaught,' did you?" Her voice was quite
calm.

"I did. Hence my silence."

"And would you have answered my first letter, had you received it?"

Vane thought for a moment before answering. "Perhaps," he said at
length. "I wanted you to decide. . . . But," grimly, "I'd have
answered the second before now if I'd had it. . . ."

"I wrote that in your rooms after I'd come up from Blandford," she
remarked, with her eyes still fixed on him.

"So I gathered from Mrs. Green. . . . My dear, surely you must have
known something had happened." He took one of her hands in his, and it
lay there lifeless and inert.

"I thought you were being quixotic," she said. "Trying to do the right
thing--And I was tired . . . my God! but I was tired." She swayed
towards him, and in her eyes there was despair. "Why did you let me
go, my man--why did you let me go?"

"But I haven't, my lady," he answered in a wondering voice.
"To-morrow. . . ." She put her hand over his mouth with a little
half-stifled groan. "Just take me in your arms and kiss me," she
whispered.

And it seemed to Vane that his whole soul went out of him as he felt
her lips on his.

Then she leaned back in her chair and looked at him gravely. "I wonder
if you'll understand. I wonder still more if you'll forgive. Since
you wouldn't settle things for me I had to settle them for
myself. . . ."

Vane felt himself growing rigid.

"I settled them for myself," she continued steadily, "or rather they
settled me for themselves. I tried to make you see I was afraid, you
know . . . and you wouldn't."

"What are you driving at?" he said hoarsely.

"I am marrying Henry Baxter in church in about a week; I married him in
a registry office the day he left for France."

EPILOGUE

A grey mist was blowing up the valley from Cromarty Firth. It hid the
low hills that flanked the little branch railway line, slowly and
imperceptibly drift