The Moon Out of Reach (Ainslee's serial)/Part 5

AN was rather silent as the Fentons' big car purred its way through the crowded streets toward Westminster. For the moment the possible consequences of her flight from Trenby Hall had been thrust aside into a corner of her mind and her thoughts had slipped back to that last meeting with Maryon, when she had shown him so unmistakably that she, at least, had ceased to care.

She had hated him at the moment, rejoicing to be free from the strange, perverse attraction he held for her. But, viewed through the softening mists of memory, a certain romance and charm seemed to cling about those days when she had hovered on the border line of love for him, and her heart beat a little faster at the thought of meeting him again.

Ralph Fenton had only a vague knowledge of the affair, but he dimly recollected that there had been something—a passing flirtation, he fancied—between Maryon and Nan in bygone days, and he proceeded to chaff her gently on the subject as they drove to the studio.

“Poor old Rooke will get a shock, Nan, when he sees you this afternoon,” he said. “He won't be anticipating the arrival of an old flame.”

She flushed a little, and Ralph continued teasingly:

“You'll really have to be rather nice to him! He's paid pretty dearly for his foolishness in bartering love for filthy lucre.”

“Don't be such an idiot, Ralph,” Penelope said severely, frowning at her husband.

He grinned delightedly.

“Old fires die hard, Penny. Do you think it is quite right of us to introduce Nan on the scene again? She's forbidden fruit now, remember.”

“And doubtless Maryon will remember it,” retorted Penelope tartly.

“I think,” pursued Fenton, “it's not unlike inserting a match into a powder barrel. Rooke,” he added reflectively, “always reminds me somewhat of a powder barrel. And Nan is by no means a safety match—warranted to produce a light from the legitimate box and no other!”

“I wish,” observed Nan plaintively, “that you wouldn't discuss me just as if I weren't here.”

They all laughed, and then, as the car slowed down to a standstill at Maryon's door, the conversation came to an end.

Rooke had established himself in one of the big and comparatively inexpensive houses in Westminster, in that pleasant, quiet backwater which lies within the shadow of the beautiful old Abbey. The house had formerly been the property of another artist who had built on to it a large and well-equipped studio, so that Rooke had been singularly fortunate in his purchase.

Nan looked about her with interest as the door swung open admitting them into a fair-sized hall. The thick, Eastern carpet, the dim, blue-gray hangings on the walls, the quaint, bronze lamps spoke eloquently of Maryon. A faint fragrance of cedar tinged the atmosphere.

The maid conducted them into a beautiful, Old-English room, its walls paneled in dark oak, while heavy oaken beams traversed the ceilings. Logs burned merrily on the big open hearth, throwing up showers of golden sparks, and the watery gleams of sunshine, filtering in through the diamond panes of latticed windows, fell lingeringly on the waxed surface of an ancient dresser. On the dresser shelves were lodged some willow-pattern plates, their clear, tender blue bearing witness to an early period.

“How like Maryon it all is!” whispered Nan.

And just then Rooke himself came into the room.

He had altered very little. It was the same supple, loose-limbed figure that approached. The pointed Vandyke beard was as carefully trimmed, the hazel eyes, with their misleading softness of appeal, as arresting as of old. Perhaps he bore himself with a little more assurance. There might have been a shade less of the bohemian and a shade more of the successful artist about him. But Rooke would never suffer from the inordinate complacency which spoils so many successful men. Always it would be tempered by that odd, cynical humor of his.

He greeted his visitors with outstretched hands.

“My dear Penelope and Ralph,” he began cordially, “this is good of busy people like yourselves”

He caught sight of the third figure standing a little behind the Fentons, and stopped abruptly. His eyes seemed to flinch for a moment. Then he made a quick step forward.

“Why, Nan!” he exclaimed. “This is a most charming surprise.”

His voice and manner were perfectly composed; only his intense paleness and the compression of his fine-cut nostrils betrayed any agitation. Nan had seen that “white” look on his face before.

Then Penelope rushed in with some commonplace remark and the brief tension was over.

“Come and see my Mrs. T. van Decken,” said Rooke presently. “The light's pretty fair now, but it will be gone after tea.”

They trooped out of the room and into the studio where several other people, who had already examined the great portrait, were still strolling about looking at various paintings and sketches.

It was a big, bare barn of a place with its cold north light, for Rooke, sybarite though he was in other respects, permitted only necessities in his studio.

“Empty great barrack, isn't it?” he said to Nan. “But I can't bear to be crowded up with extraneous hangings and draperies like some fellows. It stifles me.”

She nodded sympathetically.

“I know. I like an empty music room.”

“You still work? Ah, that's good. You shall tell me about it—when this crowd has gone. Oh, Nan, there'll be such a lot to say!”

His glance held her a moment, and she flushed under it. Those queer eyes of his had lost none of their old magnetic power. He turned away abruptly, and the next moment was listening courteously to an elderly duchess' gushing eulogy of his work.

Nan remained quietly where she was, gazing at the big picture of the famous American beauty. It was small wonder that the man who could do such work had leaped into the foremost rank of portrait painters. She felt very glad of his success, remembering how bitter he had been in former days over his failure to obtain recognition. She turned and, finding him beside her again, spoke her thought quite simply.

“You've made good at last, Maryon. You've no grudge against the world now.”

He looked down at her oddly.

“Haven't I? Well, you should know,” he replied.

Nan gave a little impatient twist of her shoulders. He hadn't altered at all, it seemed; he still possessed his old faculty for implying so much more than was contained in the actual words he spoke.

“Most people would be content with the success you've gained,” she answered steadily.

“Most people, yes. But to gain the gold and miss—the rainbow! A quoi bon?”

His voice vibrated. This sudden meeting with Nan was trying him hard.

“What did you mean”—she was speaking to him again—“by telling Penny that you expected to see me soon—before she would?”

“Ah, that's my news. Of course when I wrote I thought you were still down in Cornwall, with the Trenbys. I'd no idea you were coming up to town just now.”

“I'm up unexpectedly,” murmured Nan. “Well? What then?”

He smiled, as though enjoying his secret.

“Isn't Burnham Court somewhere in your direction?”

“Yes. It's about midway between the Hall and Mallow Court. It belonged to Sir Robert Burnham who's just died. Why do you ask?”

“Because Burnham was my godfather. The old chap disapproved of me strongly at one time, thought painting pictures a fool's job. But since luck came my way, his opinion apparently altered, and when he died he left me all his property—Burnham Court included.”

“Burnham Court!” exclaimed Nan in astonishment.

“Yes. Droll, isn't it? So I thought of coming down some time this spring and seeing how it feels to be a landowner. My wife is taking a trip to the States then to visit some friends.”

“How nice!” Nan's exclamation was quite spontaneous. It would be nice to have another of her own kind—one of her mental kith and kin—near at hand after she was married.

“I shan't be down there all the time, of course, but for week-ends and so on—in the intervals between transferring commonplace faces, and still more frequently commonplace souls, to canvas.” He paused, then asked suddenly: “So you're glad, Nan?”

“Of course I am,” she answered heartily. “It will be like old times.”

“Unfortunately, old times never—come back,” he said shortly.

And then a quaint, drumming noise like the sound of a distant tom-tom summoned them to tea.

Most of the visitors took their departure soon after tea, but Nan and the Fentons lingered on, returning to the studio to enjoy the multitude of sketches and studies stored away there. Rooke made a delightful host, pulling out one canvas after another and pouring out a stream of amusing little tales concerning, the oddities of various sitters.

Presently the door entered and the maid ushered in yet another visitor.

Nan, standing rather apart by one of the bay windows at the far end of the room, was examining a rough sketch in black and white. She caught her breath suddenly at the sound of the newcomer's voice.

“I couldn't get here earlier as I promised, Rooke, and I'm afraid the daylight's gone. However, I've no doubt Mrs. van Decken will look equally charming by artificial light. In fact, I should have said it was her natural element.”

Nan, screened from the remainder of the room by the embrasure of the window, let the sketch she was holding flutter to the ground.

The quiet, drawling voice was Peter's! And he didn't know she was here! It would be horrible to meet him suddenly like this—here—in the presence of other people!

She pressed closely against the wall of the recess, her breath coming gaspingly between parched lips. The mere tones of his voice set her heart beating in great, suffocating leaps. She had never dreamed of the possibility of meeting him here, of all places, and the realization that only a few yards separated them from one another, that if she stepped out from the alcove which screened her she would be face to face with him, drained her of all strength.

She stood there motionless, her back to the wall, her palms pressed rigidly against its surface. At last, after what appeared an infinity of time, she heard the hum of talk and laughter drift out of the room, the sound of footsteps retreating, the closing of a door.

Her stiff muscles relaxed and, leaning forward, she peered into the studio. It was empty. They had all gone and, with a sigh of relief, she stepped out from her hiding place.

She wandered aimlessly about for a minute or two, then came to anchor in front of Mrs. T. van Decken's portrait. With a curious sense of detachment, she fell to criticizing it afresh. It had been painted with amazing skill and insight. All the beauty was there, the exquisite tinting of flesh, the beautiful curve of cheek and throat and shoulder. But, behind the lovely physical presentment, Nan felt she could detect the woman's soul—predatory, feline, and unscrupulous. It was rather original of Maryon to have done that, she thought, painted both body and spirit.

She looked up and found him standing beside her. She had not heard the quiet opening and closing of the door.

“An old friend of yours has just come in to see my Van Decken,” he said quietly. His eyes were slightly quizzical.

“I know. Where—where is he?” Nan stammered.

“I took him along to have some tea. I've left him with the Fentons; they can prepare him for the—shock.”

“Maryon! You're outrageous!” she protested, flushing angrily.

“I imagined I was showing great consideration, seeing I've no cause to bear Mallory any overwhelming good will.”

“I thought you had only met him once or twice.”

Rooke looked down at her with an odd expression.

“True—in the old days, only once. At your flat. But we've knocked up against each other several times since then. And Mrs. van Decken asked him to come and see her portrait.”

“You and he can have very little in common,” observed Nan carelessly.

“Nothing,” he agreed promptly, “except the links of art. I've always been true in my art—if in nothing else. Besides, all's grist that comes to Mallory's mill. He regards me as a type. Ah!” he continued as the door opened once more. “Here they come.”

Her throat contracted with nervousness and she felt that it would be a physical impossibility for her to speak. She turned mechanically as Penelope reëntered the room, followed by her husband and Peter Mallory. Uppermost in Nan's mind was the thought, to which she clung as to a sheet anchor, that of the three witnesses to this meeting between Peter and herself, the Fentons were ignorant of the fact that she cared for him, and Maryon, whatever he might suspect, had no certain knowledge.

The dreaded ordeal was quickly over. A simple handshake, and in a few moments they were all five chatting together, Mrs. van Decken's portrait prominent in the conversation.

Mallory had altered in some indefinable way. In the fugitive glances she stole at him Nan could see that he was thinner, his face a trifle worn looking, and the old whimsical light had died out of his eyes, replaced by a rather bitter sadness.

“You'd better come and dine with us to-night, Mallory,” said Fenton, pausing as they were about to leave. “Penelope and I are due at the Albert Hall later on, but we shall be home fairly early and you can entertain Nan in our absence. It's purely a ballad concert, so she doesn't care to go with us—it's not highbrow enough!”

She glanced at Peter swiftly. Would he refuse?

There was the slightest pause. Then Peter said quietly:

“Thank you very much, I shall be delighted.”

“We dine at an unearthly hour to-night, of course,” volunteered Penelope. “Half past six.”

“As I contrived to miss my lunch to-day, I shan't grumble,” replied Peter, smiling. “Till to-night, then.”

And the Fentons' motor slid away into the lamplit dusk.

Nan gave a final touch to Penelope's hair, then stood back and regarded the effect with critical eyes.

“That'll do,” she declared. “You look a duck, Penelope! I hope you'll get a splendid reception. You will if you smile at the audience as prettily as you're smiling now! Won't she, Ralph?”

“I hope so,” answered Fenton seriously. “It would be a waste of a perfectly good smile if she doesn't.” And amid laughter and good wishes the Fentons departed for the concert, Peter Mallory accompanying them downstairs to speed them on their way,

Meanwhile Nan, left alone for the moment, became suddenly conscious of an overpowering nervousness at the prospect of spending the evening alone with Peter.

Dinner had passed without incident. Sustained by the presence of Penelope and Ralph, Nan had carried through her part in it with a brilliance and reckless daring which revealed nothing at all of the turmoil of confused emotions which underlay her apparent gayety.

She seemed to have become a new being this evening, an enchanting creature of flame and fire. She was wearing the frock which had called forth Lady Gertrude's ire, and from its filmy folds her head and shoulders emerged like a flower from its sheath, vividly arresting; her scarlet lips and “blue-violet” eyes splashes of live color against the warm, golden ivory of her skin—Nan at her most distracting; now sparkling with an almost feverish vivacity, now drooping into sudden silence.

But now, now that the need for playing a part was over, and she stood waiting for Mallory's return, something tragic and desperate looked out of her eyes. She paced the room restlessly. Outside a gale was blowing. She could hear the wind roaring through the street. A sudden gust blew down the chimney and the flames flickered and bent beneath it, while in the distance sounded a low rumble of thunder—the odd, unexpected thunder that comes sometimes in winter.

Presently the lift gates clanged apart. She heard Mallory's step as he crossed the hall. Then the door of the room opened and shut.

She did not speak. For a moment she could not even look up. She was conscious of nothing beyond the one great fact that she and Peter were alone together—alone, yet as much divided as though the whole world lay between them.

At last, with an effort, she raised her eyes and saw him standing beside her. A stifled cry escaped her. Throughout dinner, while the Fentons had been present, he had smiled and talked much as usual, so that the change in the man had been less noticeable. But the mask was off now, and in repose his face looked so worn and ravaged by grief that Nan cried out involuntarily in pitiful dismay. He made no effort to approach her. Only his eyes remained fixed on her, hungrily devouring every line of the beloved face.

“Why did you come?” she asked at last.

“I couldn't keep away. Life without you has become one long, unbearable hell.”

He spoke with a strange, slow vehemence which seemed to hold the aggregated bitterness and pain of all those solitary months. A shudder ran through her slight frame. Her own agony had been measurable with his.

“But you said at Tintagel that we mustn't meet again. You shouldn't have come—oh, you shouldn't have come!” she cried tremulously.

He drew a step nearer to her.

“I had to come. I'm a man—not a saint!” he answered.

She looked up swiftly, trying to read what lay behind the harsh repression in his tones. She felt that he was holding something in leash, something that strained and fought against restraint.

“'I'm a man—not a saint!'” The memory of his renunciation at King Arthur's Castle swept over her.

“Yet I once thought you—almost that, Peter,” she said slowly.

“Well, I'm not,” he brushed her words aside. “When I saw you to-day at the studio—God! Did you think I'd keep away? Nan, did you want me to?”

The leash was slipping. She trembled, aching to answer him as her whole soul dictated, to tell him the truth—that she wanted him every minute of the day and that life without him stretched before her like a barren waste.

“I—we—oh, you're making it so hard for me!” she said imploringly. “Please go—go, now!”

Instead, he caught her in his arms, holding her crushed against his breast.

“No, I'm not going. Oh, Nan—little Nan whom I love! I can't give you up again. Beloved! Soul of me!” And all the love and longing, against which he had struggled unavailingly throughout those empty months of separation, came pouring from his lips in a torrent of passionate pleading that shook her heart.

With an effort she tore herself free, wrenched herself away from the arms whose clasp about her body thrilled her from head to foot.

“You must go, Peter!” she exclaimed feverishly. “You must go!”

A new look sprang into his eyes—a sudden, terrible doubt and questioning.

“You want me to go?”

“Yes, yes!” She turned away, gesturing blindly in the direction of the door. The room seemed whirling round her. “I—I want you to go!”

Then she felt his hand on her shoulder and, yielding to its insistent pressure, she faced him again.

“Nan, is it because you've ceased to care that you tell me to go?” He spoke very quietly, but there was a note of intolerable fear in the tense tones of his voice.

Her shaking hands went up to her face. It would be better if he thought that of her—better for him, at least. For her, nothing mattered any more.

“Don't ask me, Peter!” she gasped, sobbingly. “Don't ask me!”

Slowly his hand fell away from her shoulder.

“Then it's true? You don't care? Trenby has taken my place?”

A heavy silence dropped between them, broken only by the sullen roll of thunder. Nan shivered a little. Her face was still hidden in her hands. She was struggling with herself, trying to force from her lips the lie which would send the man's reeling faith in her crashing to earth and drive him from her forever. She knew if he went from her like that, believing she had ceased to care, he would never come back again. He would wipe her out utterly from his thoughts—out of his heart. She would be only a dead memory to him, the symbol of a shattered faith.

It was more than she could bear. She could not give up that—Peter's faith in her! It was all she had to cling to—to carry her through life.

She stretched out her arms to him, crying brokenly:

“Oh, Peter, Peter!”

At the sound of her low, shaken voice, with its infinite appeal for understanding, his iron control snapped asunder, and he caught her in his arms, kissing her with the fierce hunger of a man who has been starved for love.

She leaned against him, physically unable to resist. For the moment everything was swept away in an anguish of happiness, in the ecstasy of burning kisses crushed against her mouth and throat and the strained clasp of arms locked round her.

“My woman!” he, muttered unsteadily. “My woman!”

She could feel the hard beating of his heart, and her slender body trembled in his arms with an answering passion. Presently he tilted her head back. Her face was white, the shadowed eyes like two dark stains on the ivory bloom of a magnolia.

“Beloved! Nan, say that you love me—let me hear you say it!”

“You know!” Her voice shook uncontrollably. “You don't need to ask me, Peter. It—it hurts to love any one as I love you.”

“You're mine”—his hold tightened round her—“mine out of all the world. My beloved.”

A flicker of lightning and again the menacing roll of thunder. Then, sudden as the swoop of a bat, the electric lights quivered and went out, leaving only the glow of the fire to pierce the gloom. In the dim light she could see his face bent over her, and all that was woman and lover within her leaped to answer the call of her mate—the infinite, imperious demand of human love that has waited and hungered through empty days and nights till at last it shall be answered by the loved one.

For a moment she lay unresisting in his arms, helpless in the grip of the passion of love which had engulfed them both. Then the memory of Roger—and Peter's wife—sentinels with drawn swords, came back to her. The sword flashed, cleaving the dividing line afresh before her eyes.

“Peter, I must go back,” she said at length.

“Back? To Trenby?” Then he mutterely savagely: “You can't. I want you!”

He bent his head and she felt his mouth on hers.

A glimmer of pale firelight searched out the two tense faces; the shadowy room seemed listening, waiting—waiting.

“I want you!” he reiterated hoarsely. “I can't live without you any longer. Nan—come with me!”

A tremulous flicker of lightning shivered across the darkness. The dead electric lights leaped into golden globes of light once more, and in the garish, shattering glare the man and woman sprang apart and stood staring at each other, trembling, with passion-stricken faces.

The long silence was broken at last, broken by a little inarticulate sound—half sigh, half sob—from Nan.

Peter raised his head and looked at her. His face was gray.

“God!” he muttered, and stumbled to the chimney piece.

Presently she spoke to him timidly.

“Peter?” she said. “Peter?”

At the sound of her voice he turned toward her, and the look in his eyes hurt her like a physical blow.

“Oh, my dear—my dear!” she cried. “Don't look like that!”

“Forgive me, Nan. I'm sorry.”

She hardly recognized the low, toneless voice.

Her eyes were shining.

“Sorry for loving me?”

“No—not for loving you. God knows, I can't help that! But because I would have taken you and made you mine—you who are not mine at all.”

“I'm all yours really, Peter.”

She came a few steps nearer to him, standing sweet and unafraid before him, her grave eyes shining with a kind of radiance.

“Dear,” she went on simply, “if you want me, I'll come,to you. Not—not secretly, while I'm still pledged to Roger. But openly, before all the world. I'll go with you—if you'll take me.”

She stood very still, waiting for his answer. Right or wrong, in that moment of utter sacrifice of self, she had risen to the best that was in her. She was willing to lay all on love's altar—body, soul, and spirit, and that honor of the Davenants which she had been so schooled to keep untarnished. Her pledge to Roger, her uncle's faith in her—all these must be tossed into the fire to make her gift complete. But the agony in Peter's face when the mask had fallen from it had temporarily destroyed for her all values except the value of love.

“I should never take you, dear,” he said at last, with great tenderness. “A man doesn't hurt the thing he loves, not in his right senses. What he'll do when the madness is on him—only his own soul knows.”

She caught his arm impetuously.

“Peter, let me come! I'm not afraid of being hurt, not if we're together. It's only the hurt of being without you that I can't bear. Oh, I know what you're thinking,” she went on as she read the negation in his face; “that I should regret it, that I should mind what people said. Dear, if I can give you happiness, things like that simply wouldn't count. Ah, believe me, Peter!”

“Even if that were all, it still wouldn't be possible,” he said gently. “You don't know what you would have to face. And I couldn't let you face it. But it isn't all. There's honor, dear, and duty.”

Her gaze met his in dreary interrogation.

“Then—then, you'll go away?” Her voice faltered, broke.

“Yes, I shall go away—out of your life.” After a moment of silence he went on:

“This is good-by. We mustn't see each other again.”

“No, no,” she broke in a little wildly. “Don't go, Peter! I can't bear it.” She clung to him, repeating piteously: “Don't go—don't go!”

He stooped and pressed his lips to her hair, holding her in his arms.

“My dear!” he murmured. “My very dear!”

And so they remained for a little space.

Presently she lifted her face, white and strained, to his.

“Must you go, Peter?”

“Heart's beloved, there is no other way. We may not love, and we can't be together and not love. So I must go.”

She lay very still in his arms for a moment. Then he felt a long, shuddering sigh run through her body.

“Yes,” she whispered, “yes. Peter, go very quickly.”

He took her face between his hands and kissed her on the mouth—not passionately, but with the ineffably sad calmness of farewell.

“God keep you, dear,” he said.

The door closed behind him, shutting him from her sight, and she stood for a few moments staring dazedly at its wooden panels. Then, with a sudden desperate impulse, she tore it open again and peered out.

But there was only silence—silence and emptiness. He had gone.

The following morning Ralph and Penelope breakfasted alone, the latter having given orders that Nan was on no account to be disturbed. It was rather a dreary meal. They were oppressed by the knowledge which last night had revealed to them—the knowledge of the tragedy of love into which their two friends had been thrust by circumstances.

On their return from the concert at the Albert Hall they had encountered Mallory in the vestibule of the Mansions, and the stark misery stamped upon his face had arrested them at once.

“Peter, what is it?”

The question had sped involuntarily from Penelope's lips as she met his blank, unseeing gaze. The sound of her voice seemed to bring him back to recognition.

“Go to Nan!” he said in queer, clipped tones. “She'll need you. Go quickly!”

And from a Nan whose high courage had at last bent beneath the storm, leaving her spent and unresisting, Penelope had learned the whole unhappy truth.

Since breakfast the Fentons had been dejectedly discussing the matter together.

“Why doesn't she break off this wretched engagement with Trenby?” asked Ralph moodily.

“She won't. I think she would have done it—if—for Peter's sake. But not otherwise. She's got some sort of fixed notion that it wouldn't be playing fair.” Penelope paused, then added wretchedly: “I feel as if our happiness has been bought at her expense!”

“Ours?” Completely mystified, Ralph looked across at her inquiringly.

“Yes, ours.” And she proceeded to fill in the gaps, explaining that when she had refused to marry him down at Mallow the previous summer, it was Nan who had brought about his recall from London,

The telephone bell buzzed suddenly as they talked, and Penelope flew to answer it. When she came back her face held a look of mingled apprehension and relief.

“Who rang up?” asked Ralph.

“It was Kitty. She's back in town, and she's coming round at once. She said she had some bad news for Nan, but I think it'll have to be kept from her. She isn't fit to stand anything more just now.”

Ralph pulled out his watch.

“I'm afraid I can't stay to see Kitty,” he said. “I've that oratorio rehearsal fixed for half-past ten.”

“Then, my dear, you'd better get off at once,” answered Penelope with her usual common sense. “You can't do any good here, and it's quite certain you'll upset things there if you're late.”

So, when Kitty arrived a few minutes later, it was Penelope alone who received her. The latter was looking very blooming after her sojourn in the south of France.

“I've left Barry behind at Cannes,” she announced. “But funnily enough, I had a craving for home. I can't think why—just in the middle of the season there! I'm glad, now, that I came. I've bad news,” she said abruptly. Penelope checked her.

“Hear mine first,” she begged, and launched into an account of the happenings of the last three days.

“Oh, Penny! How dreadful! How dreadful it all is!” exclaimed Kitty pitifully, when the other had finished. “I knew that Peter cared a long time ago. But not Nan! Though I remember once, at Mallow, wondering the tiniest bit if she were losing her heart to him.”

“Well, she's done it. If you'd seen them last night, after they had parted, you'd have had no doubts. They were both absolutely broken up.”

“And I suppose it's really my fault,” Kitty said unhappily. “I brought them together. Penny, I was a fool. But I was so afraid—so afraid of Nan with Maryon. He might have made her do anything. He could have twisted her round his little finger at the time if he'd wanted to. Thank goodness, he'd the decency not to try—that.”

“Maryon's still in love with Nan,” Penelope observed quietly. “I saw that at the studio.”

“Nan must be 'Maryon-proof' now, anyway,” Kitty asserted.

Penelope remained silent, her eyes brooding and reflective. That odd, magician's charm which Rooke so indubitably possessed might prove difficult for any woman to resist, doubly difficult for a woman whose entire happiness in life had fallen in ruins.

The entrance of the maid with a telegram gave her the chance to evade answering. She tore open the envelope and perused the wire with a puzzled frown on her face. Then she read it aloud for Kitty's benefit, still with the same bewildered expression.

“I don't understand it,” she said doubtfully. “I do!”

She and Kitty both looked up at the sound of the mocking, contemptuous voice. Nan was  standing, fully dressed, on the threshold of the room.

“Nan!” Penelope almost gasped. “I thought you were still asleep!”

“I've not been asleep—all night,” Nan answered evenly. “I asked your maid for a cup of tea some time ago. How d'you do, Kitty?”

She kissed the latter perfunctorily, her thoughts evidently preoccupied. She was very pale and heavy, violet shadows lay beneath her eyes.

“What does it mean, Nan?” Penelope asked, holding out the telegram. “I thought you said you'd left a note telling Roger you were coming here.”

Nan read the wire in silence. Her face turned a shade whiter than before, if that were possible, and there was a smoldering anger in her eyes as she crushed the flimsy sheet in suddenly tense fingers and tossed it into the fire.

“No answer,” she said shortly. As soon as the maid had left the room, she burst out furiously:

“How dare he? How dare he think such a thing?”

“What's the matter?” asked Penelope in a perturbed voice.

Nan turned to her passionately.

“Don't you see what he means? It's because I didn't write to him yesterday from here. He doesn't believe the note I left behind—he doesn't believe I'm with you!”

“But, my dear, where else should you be?” protested Penelope. “And why shouldn't he believe it?”

“I told you we'd had a row. It—it was rather a big one. He probably thinks I've run away and married”—Nan laughed mirthlessly—“any one!”

“Nan!”

“That's what's happened. You see, it was really quite a big row.” She paused, then continued indignantly: “As if I'd have tried to deceive him over it by writing that I was going to you when I wasn't! Roger's a fool! He ought to have known me better. I've never yet been coward enough to lie about anything I wanted to do.”

“But, my dear”—Penelope was openly distressed—“we must send him a wire at once. I'd no idea you'd quarreled—like that! He'll be out of his mind with anxiety.”

“He deserves to be,” said Nan in a hard voice, “for distrusting me. No, Penny,” she went on as Penelope drew a form toward her, preparatory to inditing a reassuring telegram. “I won't have a wire sent to him. D'you hear? I won't have it!' Her foot beat excitedly on the floor.

Penelope sighed and laid the telegraph form reluctantly aside.

“You agree with me, Kitten?” Nan whirled round upon Kitty for support.

“I'm not quite sure,” came the answer. “You see, I've been away so long I really hardly know how things stand between you and Roger.”

“They stand exactly as they were. I've promised to marry him in April. And I'm going to keep my promise.”

“Not in April,” said Kitty very quietly. “You won't be able to marry him so soon. Nan, dear, I've—I've bad news for you.” She hesitated, and Nan broke in hastily:

“Bad news? What—who is it?—not Uncle David?” Her voice rose a little shrilly.

Kitty nodded, her face very sorrowful.

“Yes. He died this morning—in his sleep. They sent round to let me know. He had told his man to do this if—whenever it happened. He didn't want you to have the shock of receiving a wire.”

“I don't think it would have been a shock,” said Nan, at last, quietly. “I think I knew it wouldn't be very long before—before he went away. I've known—since Christmas.”

Her thoughts went back to that evening when she and St. John had talked together at Trenby Hall. Yes, she had known, ever since then, that the dark angel was drawing near.

“I wish—I wish I'd seen him just once more,” she said wistfully, “to—to say good-by.”

Kitty searched the depths of her bag and drew out a sealed envelope.

“I think he must have known that,” she said gently. “He left this to be given to you.”

She gave her the letter and, signing to Penelope to follow her, left the room. And, in the silence of the empty room, Nan read the last words of her beloved Uncle David that would ever reach her.

There were many who would find their world the poorer for lack of the kindly, gallant spirit which had passed into “God's next room,” but to Nan the old man's death meant not only the loss of a beloved friend, but the withdrawal from her life of a strong, restraining influence which, unconsciously to herself, had withheld her from many a rash action into which her temperament would otherwise have hurried her.

She spent the rest of the day quietly in her room, and when she reappeared at dinner she was perfectly composed, although her eyes still bore traces of recent tears. Against the black of the simple frock she wore her face and throat showed pale and clear like some delicate piece of sculpture.

Penelope greeted her with kindly reproach.

“You hardly touched the lunch I sent up for you,” she said.

“I've been saying good-by to Uncle David,” Nan answered quietly. “I didn't want anything to eat.”

Kitty, who had remained at the flat, regarded her with some concern. The girl had altered immensely since she had last seen her before going abroad. Her face had worn rather fine and bore an indefinable look of strain. Kitty sighed, then spoke briefly.

“Well, you'll certainly eat some dinner,” she announced with firmness. “And, Ralph, you'd better unearth a bottle of champagne from somewhere. She wants something to pick her up a bit.”

Under Kitty's kindly, lynx-eyed gaze Nan dared not refuse to eat and drink what was put before her, and she was surprised, when dinner was over, to find how much better she felt in consequence.

After dinner Ralph went to his club, and the three women drew around the fire, talking desultorily as women will, and avoiding, as if by common consent, matters that touched them too nearly. Presently the maid came noiselessly into the firelit room.

“A gentleman has called to see Miss Davenant,” she said, addressing her mistress.

Nan's heart missed a beat. It was Peter—she was sure of it—Peter. He had come back to her! In the long watches of the night he had found out that they could not part, not like this. Never to see each other any more! It was madness. And he had come to tell her so. The agony of the interminable night had been his as well as hers.

“Did he give any name?” To her own ears her voice sounded faint and indistinct.

“No, miss. He is in the sitting room.”

Slowly Nan made her way across the hall, one hand pressed against her breast to still the painful throbbing of her heart. Outside the room she hesitated a moment; then, with a quick indrawing of her breath, she opened the door and went in.

“Roger!”

She shrank back and stood gazing at him dumbly, silent with the shock of sudden and undreamed-of disappointment. She had been so sure, so sure that it was Peter! And yet, jerked suddenly back to the reality of things, she almost smiled at her own certainty. Peter was too strong a man to renounce and then retract his renunciation twenty-four hours later.

Trenby, who had been standing staring into the fire, turned at the sound of her entrance. He looked dog-tired, and his eyes were sunken. At the sight of her a momentary expression of what seemed to be unutterable relief flashed across his face, then vanished quickly.

“Roger!” repeated Nan in astonishment.

“Yes,” he replied gruffly. “Are you surprised to see me?”

“Certainly I am. Why have you come? Why have you followed me here?”

“I've come to take you back,” he said arrogantly.

“You might have saved yourself the trouble,” she flashed back angrily. “I'm not coming. I'll return when I've finished my visit to Penelope.”

“You'll come back with me now—to-night,” he replied doggedly. “We can catch the night mail and I've a car waiting below.”

“Then it can wait! Good heavens, Roger! D'you think I'll submit to being made a perfect fool of”

He took a step toward her.

“And do you think that I'll submit to being made a fool of,” he asked in a voice of intense anger, “by your rushing away from my house in my absence—not knowing what has become of you?”

“! left a note for you,” she interrupted. “And you didn't believe what I told you in it.”

“No,” he acknowledged. “I didn't. I was afraid Good God, Nan!” he broke out with sudden passion. “Haven't you any idea of what I've been through this past forty-eight hours? It's been hell!”

“I don't understand,” she said impatiently. “Please explain.”

“Explain? Can't' you understand?” His face darkened. “You said you couldn't marry me—you asked me to release you! And then—after that!—I come home to find you gone, gone with no word of explanation, and the whole household buzzing with the story that you've run away! I waited for a letter from you, and none came. Then I wired—to safeguard you I wired from Exeter. No answer! What was I to think? What could I think, but that you'd gone? Gone to some other man!”

“Do you suppose if I'd left you for some one else I would have been afraid to tell you? That I should have written an idiotic note like that? How dared you wire to Penelope? It was abominable of you!”

“Why didn't she reply? I thought they must be away.”

“That clinched matters in your mind, I suppose,” she said contemptuously. “But it's quite simple. Penelope didn't wire because I wouldn't let her.”

He was silent. It was quite true that since Nan's disappearance from Trenby Hall he had been through untold agony of mind. The mark of those long hours of sickening apprehension was heavily imprinted on the white, set face he turned to Nan when she informed him that it was she who had kept Penelope from sending any answer to his telegram.

“And I suppose,” he said slowly, “it merely struck you as amusing to let me think what I thought?”

“You had no right to think such a thing,” she retorted. “I may be anything bad that your mother thinks me, but at least I play fair! I left Trenby to stay with Penelope, exactly as I told you in my note. If—if I proposed to break my promise to you, I wouldn't do it on the sly.” Her eyes looked steadily into his. “I'd tell you first.”

He caught her in his arms with a sudden roughness, kissing her passionately.

“You'd drive a man to madness!” he exclaimed thickly. “But I shan't let you escape a second time,” he went on with a quiet intensity of purpose. “You'll come back with me now, to-night, to Trenby.”

“No, no, I can't. I can't come now!” she cried.

“Now!” he repeated in a voice of steel. “And I'll marry you by special license within a week. I'll not risk losing you again.”

Nan shuddered in his arms. To go straight from that last farewell with Peter into marriage with a man she did not love—it was unthinkable! Some day, perhaps, she could steel herself to make the terrible surrender. But not now, not yet!

“No! No!” she cried. “I can't marry you! Not so soon! You must give me time—wait a little! Kitty!”

She struggled to break from him, but he held her fast.

“We needn't wait for Kitty to come back,” he said.

“No.” The door opened as he spoke and Kitty came quickly into the room. “No,” she answered him, “you needn't wait for me to come back. I returned yesterday.”

“Kitty!”

With a cry like some tortured, captive thing Nan wrenched herself free and fled to Kitty's side.

“Kitty! Tell him—tell him I can't marry him now. Not yet—oh, I can't!” Kitty patted her arm reassuringly.

“Don't worry,” she said. Then she turned to Roger.

“Your wedding will have to be postponed, Roger. Nan's uncle died early this morning.”

She watched the tense anger and suspicion die swiftly out of his eyes. The death of a relative, necessarily postponing Nan's marriage, appealed to that curious conventional strain in him, inherited from Lady Gertrude.

“Lord St. John dead?” he repeated. “Nan, why didn't you tell me? I should have understood if I'd known that. I wouldn't have worried you.” He was full of shocked contrition and remorse.

“I want Nan to come and stay with me for a time,” pursued Kitty steadily, on the principle of striking while the iron is hot. “Later on I'll bring her down to Mallow, and later still we can talk about the wedding. You'll have to wait some months, Roger.”

He assented, and Nan, realizing that he was making these concessions to convention, felt conscious of a wild, hysterical desire to burst out laughing. She made a desperate effort to control herself.

The room seemed to be growing very dark. Far away in the sky—no, it must be the ceiling—she could see the electric lights burning ever more and more dimly as the waves of darkness surged round her, rising higher and higher.

“But there's honor, dear, and duty.” Peter's words floated up to her on the shadowy billows which swayed toward her.

“Honor! Duty!”

There was a curious singing in her ears. It sounded like the throbbing of myriad engines, rhythmically repeating again and again:

“Honor! Duty! Honor! Duty!”

The words grew fainter, vaguer, trailing off into a regular pulsation that beat dimly against her ears.

“Honor!” She thought she said it very loudly.

But all that Kitty and Roger heard was a little moan as Nan slipped to the ground in a dead faint.

A Chesterfield couch had been pulled well into the bay window of one of Kitty's big rooms so that Nan, from the nest of cushions amid which she lay, could see all that was passing in the street below. The warm May sunshine poured into the room, revealing with painful clarity the changes which the last three months had wrought in her. Never at any time robust in appearance, she seemed the slenderest, frailest thing as she lay there, the delicate angles of her face sharpened by fever and weakness, her cheeks so hollowed that the violet-blue eyes looked almost amazingly big and wide open in her small face.

Kitty was sitting near her, while Barry, who had returned from Cannes some weeks ago, leaned, big and debonair, against the window.

“When are we going to Mallow?” asked Nan fretfully. “I'm so tired of staring at those houses across the way.”

Barry regarded the houses opposite reflectively.

“They're not inspiring, I admit,” he answered, “even though many of them are the London habitations of belted earls and marquises.”

“We'll go to Mallow as soon as you like,” interposed Kitty. “I think you're quite fit to stand the journey now.”

“Fit? Of course I'm fit. Only”—Nan's face clouded—“it will mean your leaving town just when the season's in full swing. I shan't like dragging you away.”

“Season!” scoffed Kitty. “Season be blowed! The only thing that matters is whether you're strong enough to travel.”

She regarded Nan affectionately. The latter had no idea how dangerously ill she had been. She remembered Roger's visit to the flat clearly, but everything which followed had been more or less a blank, with blurred intervals of doubtful clarity, until one day she found herself lying in a bed with Kitty standing at its foot and Peter sitting beside it. She recollected quite well observing:

“Why, Peter, you've got some gray hairs! I never noticed them before.”

Peter had laughed and made some silly reply about old age creeping on, and presently it seemed to her that Kitty, crying blindly, had led him out of the room.

Unknown to Nan, those were the first rational words she had spoken since the night on which she had fainted after refusing to return to Trenby Hall with Roger. Moved by some inexplicable premonition of impending illness, Kitty had insisted on driving her, carefully pillowed and swaddled in rugs, to her house in Green Street that same evening. “If she's going to be ill,” she remarked practically, “it will be much easier to nurse her at my place than at the flat.”

Results had justified her. During the attack of brain fever which followed, it had required all the skill of doctors and nurses to hold Nan back from the gates of death. The fever burned up her strength like a fire, and at first it had seemed as though nothing could check the delirium. All the strain and misery of the last few months poured itself out in terrified imagination. Wildly she besought those who watched beside her to keep Roger away from her, and when the fear of Roger was not present the whole burden of her speech had been a pitiful, incessant crying out for Peter—Peter!

Nothing would soothe her, and at last, in desperation, Kitty had gone to Mallory and begged him to come. But when he came Nan did not even recognize him. Instead, she gazed at him with dry, feverishly brilliant eyes and plucked at his coat sleeve with restless fingers.

“Oh, you look kind!” she had exclaimed piteously. “Will you bring Peter back to me? Nobody here”—she indicated Kitty and one of the nurses standing a little apart—“nobody here will let him come to me. I'm sure he'd come if he knew how much I wanted him!”

“I'm sure he would,” he said gently, though his heart was wrung at the sight of her flushed face and bright, unrecognizing eyes. “Now will you try to rest a little before I fetch him? See, I'll put my arm round you—so, and if you'll go to sleep I'll send for him. He'll be here when you wake.”

He had gathered her into his arms as he spoke, and his very touch seemed to soothe and quiet her.

“You're—rather like—Peter,” she said, staring at him with a troubled frown on her face.

“I am Peter,” he answered quietly. “They said you wanted me, so of course I came. You knew I would.”

“Peter? Peter?” she whispered, then shook her head. “No. You can't be Peter. He's dead, I think. I know he went away somewhere—away from me.”

Mallory's arms closed firmly round her and she yielded passively to his embrace. She lay very still for some time, and presently one of the nurses, leaning over her, signed to Peter that she was asleep.

“Don't move,” she urged in a low voice. “This sleep may save her.”

So, hour after hour, Peter had knelt there, hardly daring to change his position, with Nan's head lying against his shoulder, and her hand in his. Now and again one of the nurses fed him with milk and brandy, and after a time the intolerable torture of his cramped arms and legs dulled into a deadly numbness.

Once, watching from the foot of the bed, Kitty asked him softly:

“Can you stand it, Peter?”

“Of course,” he answered, smiling.

It was only when the early dawn was peering in at the window that at last Nan stirred in his arms and opened her eyes—eyes which held once more the blessed light of reason. Then in a voice hardly audible for weakness, but from which the wild, delirious note had gone, she had spoken.

“Why, Peter, you've got some gray hairs!”

And Peter, forcing a smile to his drawn lips, had answered with his joking remark about old age creeping on. Then, letting the nurse take her from his arms, he had toppled over on to the floor, lying prone while the second nurse rubbed his limbs and the agony of returning life coursed like a blazing fire through his veins. Afterward, with the tears running down her face, Kitty had helped him out of the room.

Nan's recovery had been slow, and she seemed restless and uneasy if he failed to visit her at least once a day. So Peter had to abandon his determination to see her no more.

At last, with the May warmth and sunshine, she had begun to pick up strength, and now she was actually on the highroad to recovery and demanding for the third or fourth time when they might go to Mallow.

“Strong enough to stand the journey!” she exclaimed, in answer to Kitty's remark. “I should think I am strong enough! I was outdoors for a couple of hours this morning, and I don't feel the least bit tired. I'm only lying here because I find it so extremely comfortable.”

“That may be a slight exaggeration,” returned Kitty. “Still, I think you could travel now. And your coming down to Mallow will rather ease things.”

“Ease things? What things?”

“Your meeting with Lady Gertrude, for one. You may have forgotten—though you can be sure she hasn't!—that you left Trenby Hall rather unceremoniously! And then your illness immediately afterward prevented your making your peace with her.”

Nan's face changed. The light seemed to die out of her eyes.

“I'd almost forgotten Lady Gertrude,” she said painfully.

“I don't think you'll find it difficult to meet her again,” replied Kitty. “Roger stopped in town all through the time you were dangerously ill”

“Did he?” interrupted Nan. “That was—rather nice of him, considering how I'd treated him.”

“Do you still mean to marry the fellow?” asked Barry bluntly.

“Yes,” she said slowly, but quite convincingly. “Why hasn't he been to see me lately?” she added after a moment.

“Because I asked him not to. He stayed in London till you were out of danger. After that I hustled him off home, and told him I should only bring you down to Mallow if he could induce Lady Gertrude to behave decently to you. I told him his only chance was to keep away from you, to manage Lady Gertrude properly, and not to worry you with letters.”

“So that's why he hasn't written? I've wondered, sometimes.”

Nan was silent for a time. Then she said quietly:

“You're a good pal, Kitten.”

“I've something else to tell you,” Kitty began reluctantly.

Nan glanced up quickly.

“What is it?” she asked.

Kitty made a gesture to her husband that he should leave them alone.

“It's about Peter,” she said when he had gone, then paused unhappily.

“Yes. Go on. Peter and I are only friends now. What is there to tell me?”

“You know that Celia, his wife, has been out in India for some years. Well, she”

Nan's frail body stiffened suddenly.

“She's coming home?” she said swiftly.

Kitty nodded.

“Yes. She's been very ill with sunstroke. And she's ordered home as soon as she is able to travel.”

Nan made no answer for a moment. Then she said almost under her breath:

“Poor Peter!”

It was late in the afternoon when Peter came to pay his usual daily visit. Kitty brought him into the room and vanished hastily, leaving the two alone together.

“You know?” he said quietly.

“Yes, I know,” she answered. “Oh, Peter, I'm so sorry! Must you have her with you?”

“I must, dear.”

“You'd be happier alone.”

“Less unhappy, perhaps.” He corrected her gently. “But I've a responsibility toward Celia. She's my wife. And though she's treated life rather as though it were a game of battledore and shuttlecock, she's never done anything to unfit herself to be my wife. Even if she had—well, I still shouldn't consider I was absolved from my responsibility toward her. Marriage is 'for better, for worse.' I can't be a coward and shirk if it it turns out 'for worse.' If I did, anything might happen—anything! Celia's a woman of no will power, driven like a bit of fluff by every breeze that blows. So you see, beloved, I must be waiting to help her when she comes back.”

Nan lifted her eyes to his face.

“I see that you're just the best and bravest man I know—preux chevalier, as I once called you. Oh, Peter! She's the luckiest woman in the world to be your wife! And she doesn't even know it!”

He drew her hands into his.

“Not really lucky to be my wife, Nan,” he said quietly, “because I can give her so little. Everything that matters—my love, my utter faith, all my heart and soul—are yours, now and forever.”

Her hands quivered in his clasp. She dared not trust herself to speak.

“Good-by, dear,” he said with infinite tenderness, and added, with a ghost of his old whimsical smile: “We seem always to be saying good-by, don't we? And then Fate steps in and brings us together again. But this time it is really good-by—good-by for always. When we meet again—if we do—I shall have Celia to care for, and you will be Roger's wife.”

He bent his head and pressed his lips against first one soft palm and then the other. She heard him cross the room; the door closed behind him. With a little cry she covered her face with her hands, crushing the palms where his kisses had lain against her shaking lips.