“Shall I tell you what is the matter?” said Nick.

She started violently, and found him leaning across the flat rock on which she was seated.  His eyes were remarkably bright.  She had a feeling that he suppressed a laugh as his look flickered over her.

“Sorry I made you jump,” he said.  “You ought to be used to me by this time.  Anyhow you needn’t be frightened.  My venom was extracted long ago.”

She turned to him with sudden, unconsidered impulse.  “Oh, Nick,” she said, “I sometimes think to myself I’ve been a great fool.”

He nodded.  Her vehemence did not seem to surprise him.  “I thought it would strike you sooner or later,” he said.

She laughed in spite of herself with her eyes full of tears.  “There’s not much comfort in that.”

“I haven’t any comfort to give you,” said Nick, “not at this stage.  I’ll give you advice if you like—­which I know you won’t take.”

“No, please don’t!  That would be even worse.”  There was a tremor in her voice.  She knew that she had stepped off the beaten track; but she had an intense, an almost passionate longing to go a little further, to penetrate, if only for a moment, that perpetual mask.

“Don’t let us talk of my affairs,” she said.  “Tell me of your own.  What are you going to do?”

Nick’s eyebrows went up.  “I thought I was coming to your wedding,” he remarked.  “That’s as far as I’ve got at present.”

She made a gesture of impatience.  “Do you never think of the future?”

“Not in your presence,” laughed Nick.  “I think of you—­you—­and only you.  Didn’t you know?”

She turned away in silence.  Was he tormenting her deliberately?  Or did he fail to see that she was in earnest?

There followed a pause, and then, urged by that unknown impulse that would not be repressed, she did a curious thing.  She got up, and, facing him, she made a very earnest appeal.

“Nick, why do you always treat me like this?  Why will you never be honest with me?”

There was more of pain than reproach in the words.  Her voice was deep and very sad.

But Nick scarcely looked at her.  He was pulling tufts of dried seaweed off the rock on which he leaned.

“My dear girl,” he said, “how can you expect it?”

“Expect it!” she echoed.  “I don’t understand.  What do you mean?”

He drew himself slowly to a sitting posture.  “How can I be honest with you,” he said, “when you are not honest with yourself?”

“What do you mean?” she said again.

He gave her an odd look.  “You really want me to tell you?”

“Of course I do.”  She spoke sharply.  The old scared feeling was awake within her, but she would not yield to it.  Now or never would she read the enigma.  She would know the truth, cost what it might.

“What I mean is this,” said Nick.  “You won’t own it, of course, but you are cheating, and you are afraid to stop.  There isn’t one woman in ten thousand who has the pluck to throw down the cards when once she has begun to cheat.  She goes on—­as you will go on—­to the end of her life, simply because she daren’t do otherwise.  You are out of the straight, Muriel.  That’s why everything is such a hideous failure.  You are going to marry the wrong man, and you know it.”