Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/290

280 quite early, he has got into the way, these last few days, of coming early."

Her words stung him in his turn.

"Stop!" he said roughly. "Do not go yet, Mrs. Bailey." He muttered between his teeth, "Mr. Chester's turn will come!" And then aloud, "Is this to be the end of everything—the end of our—our friendship? I shall leave Lacville to-night for I do not care to stay on here after you have taunted me with having come back to see you!"

Sylvia gave a little cry of protest.

"How unkind you are, Count Paul!" She still tried to speak lightly, but the tears were now rolling down her cheeks—and then in a moment she found herself in Paul de Virieu's arms. She felt his heart beating against her breast.

"Oh, my darling!" he whispered brokenly, in French, "my darling, how I love you!"

"But if you love me," she said piteously, "what does anything else matter?"

Her hand had sought his hand. He grasped it for a moment and then let it go.

"It is because I love you—because I love you more than I love myself that I give you up," he said, but, being human, he did not give her up there and then. Instead, he drew her closer to him, and his lips sought and found her sweet, tremulous mouth.

And Chester? Chester that morning for the first time in his well-balanced life felt not only ill but horribly depressed. He had come back to the Pension Malfait the