“Yes, I did.”  Grange’s voice was deep and savage.  He glowered down upon him in rising fury.  “It was to escape you.”

Nick’s eyes flamed back like the eyes of a crouching beast.  He uttered a sudden, dreadful laugh.  “Yes—­to escape me,” he said, “to escape me!  And it has fallen to me to deliver her from her chivalrous protector.  If you look all round that, you may see something funny in it.”

“Funny!” burst forth Grange, letting himself go at last.  “It’s what you have been playing for all along, you infernal mountebank!  But you have overreached yourself this time.  For that very reason I will never give her up.”

He swung past Nick with the words, goaded past endurance, desperately aware that he could not trust himself within arm’s length of that gibing, devilish countenance.

He reached the door and seized the handle, wrenched furiously for a few seconds, then flung violently round.

“Ratcliffe,” he exclaimed, “for your own sake I advise you not to keep me here!”

But Nick had remained with his face to the fire.  He did not so much as glance over his shoulder.  He had suddenly grown intensely quiet.  “I haven’t quite done with you,” he said.  “There is just one thing more I have to say.”

Grange was already striding back like an enraged bull, but something in the voice or attitude of the man who leaned against the mantelpiece without troubling to face him, brought him up short.

Against his will he halted.  “Well?” he demanded.

“It’s only this,” said Nick.  “You know as well as I do that I possess the means to prevent your marriage to Muriel Roscoe, and I shall certainly use that means unless you give her up of your own accord.  You see what it would involve, don’t you?  The sacrifice of your precious honour—­and not yours only.”

He paused as if to allow full vent to Grange’s anger, but still he did not change his position.

“You damned cur!” said Grange, his voice hoarse with concentrated passion.

Nick took up his tale as if he had not heard.  “But, on the other hand, if you will write and set her free now, at once—­I don’t care how you do it; you can tell any likely lie that occurs to you—­I on my part will swear to you that I will give her up entirely, that I will never plague her again, will never write to her or attempt in any way to influence her life, unless she on her own initiative makes it quite clear that she desires me to do so.”

He ceased, and there fell a dead silence, broken only by the lashing rain upon the windows and the long, deep roar of the sea.  He seemed to be listening to them with bent head, but in reality he heard nothing at all.  He had made the final sacrifice for the sake of the woman he loved.  To secure her happiness, her peace of mind, he had turned his face to the desert, at last, and into it he would go, empty, beaten, crippled, to return no more for ever.