Slowly the burning flush died away under her eyes.  His face changed, grew subtly harder, less passionate.  “So,” he said, with an odd quietness, “I’m not to kiss you.  It would be dishonourable, what?”

She made unflinching reply.  “It would be despicable and you know it—­to kiss any woman against her will.”

“Would it be against your will?” he asked.

“Yes, it would.”  Firmly she answered him, yet a quiver of agitation went through her.  She felt her resolution begin to waver.

But in that moment something in Piers seemed to give way also.  He cried out to her as if in sudden, intolerable pain.  “Avery!  Avery!  Are you made of stone?  Can’t you see that this is life or death to me?”

She answered him instantly; it was almost as if she had been waiting for that cry of his.  “Yes, but you must get the better of it.  You can if you will.  It is unworthy of you.  You are trying to take what is not yours.  You have made a mistake, and you are wronging yourself and me.”

“What?” he exclaimed.  “You don’t love me then!”

He flung his arms wide upon the words, with a gesture of the most utter despair, and turned from her.  A moment he stood swaying, as if bereft of all his strength; and then with abrupt effort he began to move away.  He stumbled blindly, heavily, as he went, and the crying of the wheeling sea-gulls came plaintively through a silence that could be felt.

But ere that silence paralysed her, Avery spoke, raising her voice, for the urgency was great.

“Piers, stop!”

He stopped instantly, but he did not turn, merely stood tensely waiting.

She collected herself and went after him.  She laid a hand that trembled on his arm.

“Don’t leave me like this!” she said.

Slowly he turned his head and looked at her, and the misery of that look went straight to her heart.  All the woman’s compassion in her throbbed up to the surface.  She found herself speaking with a tenderness which a moment before no power on earth would have drawn from her.

“Piers, something is wrong; something has happened.  Won’t you tell me what it is?”

“I can’t,” he said.

His lower lip quivered unexpectedly and she saw his teeth bite savagely upon it.  “I’d better go,” he said.

But her hand still held his arm.  “No; wait!” she said.  “You can’t go like this.  Piers, what is the matter with you?  Tell me!”

He hesitated.  She saw that his self-control was tottering.  Abruptly at length he spoke.  “I can’t.  I’m not master of myself.  I—­I—­” He broke off short and became silent.

“I knew you weren’t,” she said, and then, acting upon an impulse which she knew instinctively that she would never regret, she gave him her other hand also.  “Let us forget all this!” she said.

It was generously spoken, so generously that it could not fail to take effect.  He looked at her in momentary surprise, began to speak, stopped, and with a choked, unintelligible utterance took her two hands with the utmost reverence into his own, and bowed his forehead upon them.  The utter abandonment of the action revealed to her in that moment how completely he had made her the dominating influence of his life.