“I don’t know,” said Brown, smiling in the midst of the faces which now gave him back his smile, “but that if you are kind to me you’ll test my endurance still more heavily.  But—­we’ll risk it.”

The scene now became a gay one—­gay, at least, upon the surface.  Brown was his old self again, the one they had known, and he was the centre of the good-fellowship which now reigned.  So, for a time.  Then came the supreme test of his life—­as unexpectedly as such tests come, when a man thinks he has won through to the thin edge of the struggle.

XIV

BROWN’S TRIAL BY FIRE

He had gone alone into a den of Atchison’s, where was kept a medley of books and pipes and weapons, a bachelor collection of trophies of all sorts.  He was in search of a certain loving-cup which had been mentioned and asked for, and Atchison himself had for the moment left the apartment to see an insistent caller below.  The den was at some distance from the place where the company was assembled, and Brown could hear their voices only in the remote distance as he searched.  Suddenly a light sound as of the movement of silken draperies fell upon his ear, and at the same instant a low voice spoke.  He swung about, to see a figure before him at sight of which, alone as he had been with it for months, he felt his unsubdued heart leap in his breast.  By her face he knew she had followed him for a purpose.  He let her speak.

“Donald Brown,” she said—­and she spoke fast and breathlessly, as if she feared, as he did, instant interruption and this were her only chance—­“what you have said to-night makes me forget everything but what I want you to know.”

Quite evidently her heart was beating synchronously with his, for he could see how it shook her.  He stared at her, at the lovely line and colour of cheek and chin, at the wonderful shadowed eyes, at the soft darkness of her heavy hair.  She was wearing misty white to-night, with one great red rose upon her breast; she was such a sight as might well blind a man, even if he were not already blind with love of her.  The fragrance of the rose was in his nostrils—­it assailed his senses as if it were a part of her, its fragrance hers.  But he did not speak.

“You asked me something once,” she went on, with an evident effort.  “Would you mind telling me if—­if—­”

But he would not help her.  He could not believe he understood what she meant to say.

“You make it very hard for me,” she murmured.  “Yet I believe I understand why, if this thing is ever said at all, I must be the one to say it.  Do you—­Donald—­do you—­still—­care?”

“O God!” he cried in his heart. “O God!  Couldn’t You have spared me this?”

But aloud, after an instant, he said, a little thickly, “I think you know without asking.  I shall never stop caring.”

She lifted her eyes.  “Then—­” and she waited.