She released herself. ‘How can we forget it? It poisons today, it blunts tomorrow. It makes a farce of—of everything.’

‘I ought not to have spoken,’ he said remorsefully, ‘and, but for that other fellow, I should have waited till I was free. Do you forgive me?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Whatever happens, the world will never hold any woman for me but you.’

‘You have possibly said that before?’

‘I was a young fool—she told me so; and, good heavens! I know it now.’

‘Tell me’, she said; ‘let us walk about. What is this other woman like?’

‘Let us forget her’, he pleaded.

‘I want to know.’

‘Very small and fair; remarkably fair and witty and—well, I hardly know how to put it, courageous: it was the kind of fine unfeminine courage she seemed to have, that—that trapped my fancy. It struck me as an uncommon trait; if she had been a man she would have been cut out for a soldier. You see it was not love, darling; it began with a sort of impersonal admiration, and that’s what it has come back to now.’

‘She will marry you’, the girl assented conclusively. ‘I think I understand her better than you.’

‘And you will hate my memory?’

‘Yes, for a time; and then—then I suppose I shall marry some one else.’

‘If I were you, I would rather spend my life alone.’

‘It is not so easy for women to talk or think of loneliness; but I love you, Alan’, she ended passionately.

They bade each other a troubled and subdued good-night.

III

…tandis que, dans le lointain, le cloche de la paroisse—emplissait l’air de vibrations douces, protectrices, conseillères de bon sommeil à ceux qui ont encore des lendemains— (…while, in the distance, the parish bell—filled the air with soft, protective vibrations, counsellors of a good sleep to those for whom tomorrow will still come—)

Lady Hopedene closed the book brusquely, with the little recurrent foreign gesture of impatience.

‘I must avoid this man; he is deplorably enervating.’ The china clock on the opposite wall struck four, and, summoned by its chime, the rejected phrase returned, to be rapidly dismissed again. Ceux qui ont encore des lendemains.

She passed a hand across her eyes, and pushed back the brilliant cushions against which her head rested uneasily. They framed the gold hair superbly, but seemed to have chased the delicate flush, once sweetly permanent, from the childish face. It looked out now from them nearly colourless and a little drawn.

The door opened, and a mechanical voice announced, ‘Captain Henley.’