ago!  She was pale and wan, but so ecstatically proud and happy looking; and Tristram at once said, they—­he and Zara—­must be the god-parents of her boy; and Zara held the crimson, crumpled atom for a moment, and then looked up and met her husband’s eyes, and saw that they had filled with tears.  And she returned the creature to its mother—­but she could not speak, for a moment.

And finally they had come home again—­home to Wrayth—­and no more unhappy pair of young, healthy people lived on earth.

Zara could hardly contain her impatience to see if a telegram for her from Mimo had come in her absence.  Tristram saw her look of anxiety and strain, and smiled grimly to himself.  She would get no answering telegram from her lover that day!

And, worn out with the whole thing, Zara turned to him and asked if it would matter or look unusual if she said—­what was true—­that she was so fatigued she would like to go to bed and not have to come down to dinner.

“I will not do so, if it would not be in the game,” she said.

And he answered, shortly: 

“The game is over, to-night:  do as you please.”

So she went off sadly, and did not see him again until they were ready to start in the morning—­the Friday morning, which Tristram called the beginning of the end!

He had arranged that they should go by train, and not motor up, as he usually did because he loved motoring; but the misery of being so close to her, even now when he hoped he loathed and despised her, was too great to chance.  So, early after lunch, they started, and would be at Park Lane after five.  No telegram had come for Zara—­Mimo must be away—­but, in any case, it indicated nothing unusual was happening, unless he had been called to Bournemouth by Mirko himself and had left hurriedly.  This idea so tortured her that by the time she got to London she could not bear it, and felt she must go to Neville Street and see.  But how to get away?

Francis Markrute was waiting for them in the library, and seemed so full of the exuberance of happiness that she could not rush off until she had poured out and pretended to enjoy a lengthy tea.

And the change in the reserved man struck them both.  He seemed years younger, and full of the milk of human kindness.  And Tristram thought of himself on the day he had gone to Victoria to meet Zara, when she had come from Paris, and he had given a beggar half a sovereign, from sheer joy of life.

For happiness and wine open men’s hearts.  He would not attempt to speak about his own troubles until the morning:  it was only fair to leave the elderly lover without cares until after the dinner at Glastonbury House.

At last Zara was able to creep away.  She watched her chance, and, with the cunning of desperation, finding the hall momentarily empty, stealthily stole out of the front door.  But it was after half-past six o’clock, and they were dining at Glastonbury House, St. James’s Square, at eight.