“You must eat something,” urged Nap.  “Satisfy your hunger with strawberries and cream.”

But Anne had no hunger to satisfy, and she presently rose from the table with something like a sigh of relief.

They went into the drawing-room, a room smelling strongly of musk, and littered largely with furniture of every description.  Nap opened wide a door-window that led into a miniature rosegarden.  Beyond stretched the common, every detail standing out with marvellous vividness in the weird storm-light.

“St. Christopher!” he murmured softly.  “We are going to catch it.”

Anne sat down in a low chair near him, gazing forth in silence, her chin on her hand.

He turned a little and looked down at her, and thus some minutes slipped away, the man as tensely still as the awe-stricken world without, the woman deep in thought.

He moved at last with a curious gesture as if he freed and restrained himself by the same action.

“Why don’t you think out loud?” he said.

She raised her eyes for a moment.  “I was thinking of my husband,” she said.

He made a sharp movement—­a movement that was almost fierce—­and again seemed to take a fresh grip upon himself.  His black brows met above his brooding eyes.  “Can’t you leave him out of the reckoning for this one night?” he asked.

“I think not,” she answered quietly.

He turned his face to the sinking sun.  It shone like a smouldering furnace behind bars of inky cloud.

“You told me once,” he said, speaking with obvious constraint, “that you did not think you would ever live with him again.”

She stifled a sigh in her throat.  “I thought so then.”

“And what has happened to make you change your mind?”

Anne was silent.  She could not have seen the fire that leapt and darted in the dusky eyes had she been looking at him, but she was not looking.  Her chin was back upon her hand.  She was gazing out into the darkening world with the eyes of a woman who sees once more departed visions.

“I think,” she said slowly at length, as he waited immovably for her answer, “that I see my duty more clearly now than then.”

“Duty!  Duty!” he said impatiently.  “Duty is your fetish.  You sacrifice your whole life to it.  And what do you get in return?  A sense of virtue perhaps, nothing more.  There isn’t much warming power in virtue.  I’ve tried it and I know!” He broke off to utter a very bitter laugh.  “And so I’ve given it up,” he said.  “It’s a trail that leads to nowhere.”

Anne’s brows drew together for an instant.  “I hoped you might come to think otherwise,” she said.

He shrugged his shoulders.  “How can I?  I’ve lived the life of a saint for the past six months, and I am no nearer heaven than when I began.  It’s too slow a process for me.  I wasn’t made to plough an endless furrow.”

“We all of us say that,” said Anne, with her faint smile.  “But do we any of us really know what we were made for?  Are we not all in the making still?”