He almost pushed her from him with the words, and it came to her that for some reason Guy’s welfare was uppermost with him just then.  He had never betrayed any anxiety on his account before, and she wondered greatly at his attitude.  But it was no time for questioning.  Mutely she obeyed him and went back.

She found Guy in the act of filling a glass for Kelly.  His own stood empty at his elbow.  She went forward quickly, and laid her hand on his shoulder.  “Guy, please!” she said,

He looked at her, the bottle in his hand.  In his eyes she saw again that dreadful leaping flame which made her think of some starved and desperate animal.  “What is it?” he said.

An overwhelming sense of her own futility came upon her.  She felt almost like a child standing there, attempting that of which Burke had declared himself to be incapable.

“What is it?” he said again.

She braced herself for conflict.  “Please,” she said gently.  “I want you to wait and have some tea.  It won’t take long to get.”  Then, as the fever of his eyes seemed to burn her:  “Please, Guy!  Please!”

Kelly put aside his own drink untouched.  “There’s no refusing such a sweet appeal as that,” he declared gallantly.  “Guy, I move a postponement.  Tea first!”

But Guy was as one who heard not.  He was staring at Sylvia, and the wild fire in his eyes was leaping higher, ever higher.  In that moment he saw her, and her alone.  It was as if they two had suddenly met in a place that none other might enter.  His words of the morning rushed back upon her—­his passionate declaration that life was not long enough for sacrifice—­that the future to which she looked was but a mirage which she would never reach.

It all flashed through her brain in a few short seconds, vivid, dazzling, overwhelming, and the memory of Kieff went with it—­Kieff and his cold, sinister assertion that she held Guy’s destiny between her hands.

Then, very softly, Guy spoke.  “To please—­you?” he said.

She answered him, but it was scarcely of her own volition.  She was as one driven—­“Yes—­yes!”

He looked at her closely as if to make sure of her meaning.  Then, with a quick, reckless movement, he turned and set down the bottle on the table.

“That settles that,” he said boyishly.  “Go ahead, Kelly!  Drink!  Don’t mind me!  I am—­brandy-proof.”

And Sylvia, throbbing from head to foot, knew she had conquered, knew she had saved him for a time at least from the threatening evil.  But there was that within her which shrank from the thought of the victory.  She had acted almost under compulsion, yet she felt that she had used a weapon which would ultimately pierce them both.

She scarcely knew what passed during the interval that followed before Burke’s return.  As in a dream she heard Kelly still talking about the Brennerstadt diamond, and Guy was asking him questions with a keenness of interest that seemed strange to her.  She herself was waiting and watching for Burke, dreading his coming, yet in a fashion eager for it.  For very curiously she had a feeling that she needed him.  For the first time she wanted to lean upon his strength.