"Barry"--Kitty tapped her husband's arm--"go down and see if the car is there. Peter, can I drop you anywhere?"

In a couple of minutes the room was cleared, and Kitty, shepherding her flock before her, departed in a gale of good-byes, leaving Nan and Maryon Rooke together.

Each was silent. The girl's small head was thrown back, and in the poise of her slim young body there was a mingling of challenge and appealing self-defence. She looked like some trapped wild thing at bay.

Slowly Rooke crossed the room and came towards her, and as she met those odd, magnetic eyes of his--pa.s.sionately expressive as only hazel eyes can be--she felt the old fascination stealing over her once more. Her heart sank. She had dreaded this, fought against it, and in her inmost soul believed that she had conquered it. Yet now his mere presence sent the blood racing through, her veins with a hurrying, leaping speed that frightened her.

"Nan!" As he spoke he bent and took her two hands gently into his.

Then, as though the touch of her slight fingers roused some slumbering fire within him, his grasp tightened suddenly. He drew her nearer, his eyes holding hers, and her slim body swayed towards him, yielding to the eager clasp of his arms.

"Kiss me, Nan!" he said, the roughness of pa.s.sion in his voice. "You never kissed me--never in all those beautiful months we were together.

And now--now when there's only parting ahead of us--"

His eyes burned down on to her tilted face. She could hear his hurried breathing. His lips were almost touching hers.

. . . Then the door opened quickly and Peter Mallory stood upon the threshold.

Swiftly though they started apart, it was impossible that he should not have seen Rooke holding Nan close in his arms, his head bent above hers.

Their att.i.tude was unmistakable--it could have but one significance.

Mallory paused abruptly in the doorway. Then, in a voice entirely devoid of expression, he said quietly:

"Mrs. Seymour left her fan behind--I came back to fetch it." With a slight bow he picked up the forgotten fan and turned to go. "Good-bye once more."

The door closed behind him, and Nan stood very still, her arms hanging down at her sides. But Maryon could read the stricken expression in her eyes--the desperate appeal of them. They betrayed her.

"What's that man to you?" he demanded.

"Nothing."

He caught her roughly by the shoulders.

"I don't believe it!" he exclaimed hotly. "He's the man you love. The very expression of your face gave it away."

"I've told you," she answered unemotionally. "Peter Mallory is nothing to me, never can be anything, except"--her voice quivered a little despite herself--"just a friend."

Maryon's eyes searched her face.

"Then kiss me!" He repeated his earlier demand, imperiously.

She drew back.

"Why should I kiss you?"

The quietly uttered question seemed to set him very far apart from her.

In an instant he knew how much he had forfeited by his absence.

"Nan," he said, in his voice a curious charm of appeal, "do you know it's nearly a year since I saw you? And now--now I've only half an hour!"

"Only half an hour?" she repeated vaguely.

"Yes, I go back to Devonshire to-night. But I craved a glimpse of the 'Beloved' before I went."

The words brought Nan sharply back to herself. He was still the same incomprehensible, unsatisfactory lover as of old, and with the realisation a cold fury of scorn and resentment swept over her, blotting out what she had always counted as her love for him. It was as though a string, too tightly stretched, had suddenly snapped.

She answered him indifferently.

"To cheer you on your way, I suppose?"

"No. I shouldn't"--significantly--"call it cheering. I've been back in England a month, alone in the d.a.m.ned desolation of Dartmoor, fighting--fighting to keep away from you."

She looked at him with steady, scrutinising eyes.

"Why need you have kept away?" she asked incisively.

"At the bidding of the great G.o.d Circ.u.mstance. Oh, my dear, my dear"--speaking with pa.s.sionate vehemence--"don't you know . . . don't you understand that if only I weren't a poor devil of a painter with my way to make in a world that can only be bought with gold--nothing should part us ever again? . . . But as it is--"

Nan listened to the outburst with down-bent head. She understood now--oh, yes, she understood perfectly. He loved her well enough in his own way--but Maryon's way meant that the love and happiness of the woman who married him would always be a matter of secondary importance. The bitterness of her resentment deepened within her, flooding her whole being.

"'If only!'" repeated Rooke. "It's the old story, Nan--the desire of the moth for the flame."

"The moth is a very blundering creature," said Nan quietly. "He makes mistakes sometimes--perhaps imagining a flame where there is none."

"No!" exclaimed Rooke violently. "I made no mistake! You loved me as much as I loved you. I know it! By G.o.d, do you think a man can't tell when the woman he loves, loves him?"

"Well, you must accept the only alternative then," she answered coolly.

"Sometimes a flame flickers out--and dies."

It was as though she had cut him across the face with a whip. In a sudden madness he caught her in his arms, crushing her slender body against his, and kissed her savagely.

"There!" he cried, a note of fierce triumph ringing in his voice.

"Whether your love is dead or no, I'll not go out of your life with nothing to call my own, and I've made your lips--mine."

Loosening his hold of her he stumbled from the room.

Nan remained just where he had left her. She stood quite motionless for several minutes, almost as though she were waiting for something. Then with a leap of her breath, half-sigh, half-exultation, the knowledge of what had happened to her crystallised into clear significance.

In one swift, overwhelming moment of illumination she realised that the frail blossom of love which had been tentatively budding in the garden of her heart was dead--withered, starved out of existence ere it had quite believed in its own reality.

Maryon Rooke no longer meant anything to her. She felt completely indifferent as to whether she ever saw him again or not. She was free!

While he had been with her she had felt unsure, uncertain of herself.

The interview had shaken her. Yet actually, after those first dazzled moments, the emotion she felt partook more of the dim, sad ache that the memory-haunted scent of a flower may bring than of any more vital sentiment. But now that he had gone, it came upon her with a shock of joyful surprise that she was free--beautifully, gloriously free!

The ecstasy only lasted for a moment. Then with a sudden childish movement she put her hand resentfully to her face where the roughness of his beard had grazed it. She wished he had not kissed her--it would be a disagreeable memory.

"I shall never forget now," she muttered. "I shall never be able to forget."

There was an odd note of fear in her voice.