Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/255

 be. Ripley had thought of nothing else for days. The two met only to stare and stammer, to look down and draw apart. The girl found herself first. She drew up haughtily and, holding to the newel post with one hand and clenching the other in the folds of her skirt, she asked abruptly:

'You know why I came?'

The man nodded and piteously turned away his eyes.

'I know why—Lanice.'

Then he in his turn straightened himself and asked the same defiant question—flinging it at the girl's feet, like a token for her either to stamp upon or to pick up.

'And you—you know why I came?'

She knew—and the reason humbled and soothed and hurt her. She answered very gently, 'Yes, I know.'

The man's love wrapped about her and strangely at this strange moment seemed more real than Anthony's desires. In spite of all he had not said on Bodmin Moor she knew that he loved her and would die to make her happy. She did not know the anguish or the turmoil of soul and body he had endured during the last four days nor how with the determination to go to Winchester—something—some power of self-control—had broken within him. He turned away from her slightly.

'I cannot any longer pretend to be your friend—Lanice, because I am really your lover—I think I have alwavs been...but that can wait. Now is not