She slipped her arm about his bent shoulders with a gesture of infinite tenderness.  “Piers—­dear boy, what is it?” she said softly.  “Is there some trouble in your past—­something you can’t bear to speak of?  Remember, I am not a girl, I may understand—­some things—­better than you think.”

She felt his hold upon her tighten almost convulsively, but for a while he made no answer.

Then at length slowly he raised his head and looked at her.  “Do you—­really—­think the past matters?” he said.

She met his eyes with their misery and their longing, and a tremor of uncertainty went through her.

“Tell me, Avery!” he insisted.  “If you felt yourself able to get away from old burdens, and if—­if there was no earthly reason why they should hamper your future—­” He broke off, and again his arm tightened.  “It’s damnable that they should!” he muttered savagely.

“My dear, I don’t know how to answer you,” she said.  “Are—­you afraid to be open with me?  Do you think I shouldn’t understand?”

His eyes fell abruptly.  “I am quite sure,” he said, “that it would be easier for me to give you up.”  And with that he suddenly set her free and stood up before her straight and stiff.  “Let me see you home!” he said.

They faced one another in the dimness, and Avery marked afresh the weariness of his face.  He looked like a man who had come through many days and nights of suffering.

He glanced up as she did not speak.  “Shall we go?” he said.

But Avery stood hesitating, asking herself if this could indeed be the end, if the impulse that had drawn her thither had been after all a mistaken one, or if even yet it might not carry her further than she had ever thought to go.

He turned towards the conservatory door by which she had entered, and quietly opened it.  A soft wind blew through to her, laden with the scent of the wet earth and a thousand opening buds.  It seemed to carry the promise of eternal hope on unseen wings straight to her heart.

Slowly she followed him across the room, reached him, passed through into the scented darkness.  A few steps more and she would have been in the open air, but she was uncertain of the way.  The place was too dim for her to see it.  She paused for him to guide her.

The door closed behind her; she heard it softly swing on its hinges, and then came his light footfall close to her.

“Straight on!” he said, and his voice sounded oddly cold and constrained.  “There are three steps at the end.  Be careful how you go!  Perhaps you would rather wait while I fetch a light.”

His tone hurt her subtly, wounding her more deeply than she had realized that he had it in his power to wound.

She moved forward blindly with a strangled sensation at her throat and a rush of hot tears in her eyes.  She had never dreamed that Piers—­the warm-hearted, the eager—­had it in him to treat her so.