"I imagined. I was showing great consideration, seeing I've no cause to bear Mallory any overwhelming goodwill."

"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"--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!"--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 re-entered 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 high-brow enough!"--with a twinkle in Nan's direction.

She glanced at Peter swiftly. Would he refuse?

There was the slightest pause. Then--

"Thank you very much," he said quietly. "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.

"Wasn't that rather rash of you, Ralph?" asked Penelope later on, when they were both dressing for the evening. "I think--last summer--Peter was getting too fond of Nan for his own peace of mind."

Ralph came to the door of his dressing-room in his shirt-sleeves, shaving-brush in hand.

"Good Lord, no!" he said. "Mallory's married and Nan's engaged--what more do you want? They were just good pals. And anyway, even if you're right, the affair must he dead embers by this time."

"It may be. Still, there's nothing gained by blowing on them," replied Penelope sagely.

CHAPTER XXVI

"THE WIDTH OF A WORLD BETWEEN"

Nan gave a final touch to Penelope's hair, drawing the gold fillet which bound it a little lower down on to the broad brow, 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. There was so much--so much that lay behind them that they must either restrict their conversation to the merest trivialities, avoiding all reference to the past, or find themselves plunged into dangerous depths. Dinner had pa.s.sed 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 gaiety.

She seemed to have become a new being this evening, an enchanting creature of flame and fire. She said the most outrageous things at dinner, talking a lot of clever nonsense but sheering quickly away if any more serious strain of thought crept into the conversation. For an instant she might plumb the depths, the next she would be winging lightly over the surface again, while a spray of sparkling laughter rose and fell around her. With b.u.t.terfly touch she opened the cupboard of memory, daring Peter the while with her eyes, skimming the thin ice of bygone times with the adroitness of an expert skater.

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 colour against the warm golden ivory of her skin.

It was Nan at her most emotionally distracting, now sparkling with an almost feverish vivacity, now drooping into sudden silence, while the lines of her delicately angled face took on a touching, languorous appeal.

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 showed, so worn and ravaged by grief that Nan cried out involuntarily in pitiful dismay.

Her first impulse was to fold her arms about him, drawing that lined and altered face against her bosom, hiding from sight the stark bitterness of the eyes that met her own, and comforting him as only the woman who loves a man knows how.

Then, like a black, surging flood, the memory of all that kept them apart rushed over her and she drew back her arms, half-raised, falling limply to her sides. 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. Her voice seemed to herself as though it came from a great distance. It sounded like someone else speaking.

"I couldn't keep away. Life without you has become one long, unbearable h.e.l.l."

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 of separation 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 as though he were 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.

But he brushed her words aside.

"Well, I'm not. When I saw you to-day at the studio . . . G.o.d! Did you think I'd keep away? . . . Nan, did you _want_ me to?"