He looked up at her again for an instant as he said it.  He had spoken with his usual shrewd decision, but there was no hint of excitement about him.  He might have been discussing some matter of a purely impersonal nature.

Muriel stood mutely poking holes in the sand.  She could find nothing to say to this matter-of-fact indictment.

“And now,” Nick proceeded, “I will tell you why you are doing it.”

She started at that, and looked up with flaming cheeks.  “I don’t think I want to hear any more, Nick.  It—­it’s rather late in the day, isn’t it?”

He shrugged his shoulders.  “I knew you would be afraid to face it.  It’s easier, isn’t it, to go on cheating?”

Her eyes gleamed for a moment.  He had flicked a tender place.  “Very well,” she said proudly.  “Say what you like.  It will make no difference.  But please understand that I admit none of this.”

Nick’s grin leapt goblin-like across his face and was gone.  “I never expected it of you,” he told her coolly.  “You would sooner die than admit it, simply because it would be infinitely easier for you to die.  You will be false to yourself, false to Grange, false to me, rather than lower that miserable little rag of pride that made you jilt me at Simla.  I didn’t blame you so much then.  You were only a child.  You didn’t understand.  But that excuse won’t serve you now.  You are a woman, and you know what Love is.  You don’t call it by its name, but none the less you know it.”

He paused for an instant, for Muriel had made a swift gesture of protest.

“I don’t think you know what you are saying,” she said, her voice very low.

He sprang abruptly to his feet.  “Yes,” he said, speaking very rapidly.  “That’s how you will trick yourself to your dying day.  It’s a way women have.  But it doesn’t help them.  It won’t help you.  For that thing in your heart—­the thing that is fighting for air—­the thing you won’t own—­the thing that drove you to Grange for protection—­will never die.  That is why you are miserable.  You may do what you will to it, hide it, smother it, trample it.  But it will survive for all that.  All your life it will be there.  You will never forget it though you will try to persuade yourself that it belongs to a dead past.  All your life,”—­his voice vibrated suddenly, and the ever-shifting eyes blazed into leaping flame—­“all your life, you will remember that I was once yours to take or to throw away.  And—­you wanted me, yet—­you chose to throw me away.”

Fiercely he flung the words at her.  There was nothing impersonal about him now.  He was vitally, overwhelmingly, in earnest.  A deep glow covered the parchment face.  The man was as it were electrified by passion.

And Muriel gazed at him as one gazing upon sudden disaster.  What was this, what was this, that he had said to her?  He had rent the veil aside for her indeed.  But to what dread vision had he opened her eyes?