“What did you say to her?” questioned Daisy.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter, does it?  I didn’t see her.  I wrote.  I didn’t tell her anything that it was unnecessary for her to know.  In fact I didn’t give her any particular reason at all.  She’ll think me an infernal cad.  And so I am.”

“You are not, Blake!” she declared vehemently.  “You are not!”

He was silent, still tightly clasping her hand.

After a pause, she made a gentle movement to withdraw it; but at that he turned with a sudden mastery and thrust his arms about her.  “Daisy,” he broke out passionately, “I can’t do without you!  I can’t!  I can’t!  I’ve tried,—­Heaven knows how I’ve tried!  But it can’t be done.  It was madness ever to attempt to separate us.  We were bound to come together again.  I have been drifting towards you always, always, even when I wasn’t thinking of you.”

Fiercely the hot words rushed out.  He was holding her fast, though had she made the smallest effort to free herself he would have let her go.

But Daisy sat quite still, neither yielding nor resisting.  Only at his last words her lips quivered in a smile of tenderest ridicule.  “I know, my poor old Blake,” she said, “like a good ship without a rudder—­caught in a strong current.”

“And it has been the same with you,” he insisted.  “You have always wanted me more than—­”

He did not finish, for her hand was on his lips, restraining him.  “You mustn’t say it, dear.  You mustn’t say it.  It hurts us both too much.  There!  Let me go!  It does no good, you know.  It’s all so vain and futile—­now.”  Her voice trembled suddenly, and she ceased to speak.

He caught her hand away, looking straight up at her with that new-born mastery of his that made him so infinitely hard to resist.

“If it is quite vain,” he said, “then tell me to go,—­and I will.”

She tried to meet his eyes, but found she could not.  “I—­shall have to, Blake,” she said in a whisper.

“I am waiting,” he told her doggedly.

But she could not say the word.  She turned her face away and sat silent.

He waited with absolute patience for minutes.  Then at last very gently he took his arms away from her and stood up.

“I am going back to the inn,” he said.  “And I shall wait there till to-morrow morning for your answer.  If you send me away, I shall go without seeing you again.  But if—­if you decide otherwise,”—­he lowered his voice as if he could not wholly trust it—­“then I shall apply at once for leave to resign.  And—­Daisy—­we will go to the New World together, and make up there for all the happiness we have missed in the Old.”

He ended almost under his breath, and she seemed to hear his heart beat through the words.  It was almost too much for her even then.  But she held herself back, for there was that in her woman’s soul that clamoured to be heard—­the patter of tiny feet that had never ceased to echo there, the high chirrup of a baby’s voice, the vision of a toddling child with eager arms outstretched.