It pulsed through her like an electric current, seeming to overwhelm every other sensation, shutting her off as it were from the home-world to which she had fled, how fruitlessly, for healing.  Once more skeleton fingers held hers, shifting to and fro, to and fro, slowly, ceaselessly, flashing the deep rays that shone from ruby hearts hither and thither.  Once more—­But she would not bear it!  She was free!  She was free!  She flung out the hand that once had worn those rubies, and, resisting wildly, broke away from the spell that the words her father had written had woven afresh for her.

It might be true that Love conquered all things—­he had believed it—­but ah, what had this uncanny force to do with Love?  Love was a pure, a holy thing, the bond imperishable—­the Eternal Flame at which all the little torches of the world are lighted.

Moreover, there was no fear in Love, and she—­she was sick with fear whenever she encountered that haunting phantom of memory.

With a start she awoke to the fact that she was not alone.  Blake Grange had taken her out-flung hand, and was speaking to her softly, soothingly.

“Don’t grieve so awfully, Miss Roscoe,” he urged, a slight break in his own voice.  “You’re not left friendless.  I know how it is.  I’ve felt like it myself.  But it gets better afterwards.”

Muriel suffered him with a dawning sense of comfort.  It surprised her to see tears in his eyes.  She wondered vaguely if they were for her.

“Yes,” she said, after a pause.  “It does get better, I know, in a way.  Or at least one gets used to an empty heart.  One gets to leave off listening for what one will never, never hear any more.”

“Never is a dreary word,” said Grange.

She bent her head silently, and again his heart overflowed with pity for her.  He looked down at the hand that lay so passively in his.

“I hope you will always think of me as a friend,” he said.

She looked up at him a quick gleam of gratitude in her eyes.  “Thank you,” she said.  “Yes, always.”

He still held her hand.  “You know,” he said, blundering awkwardly, “I always blamed myself that—­that I wasn’t the one to be with you when you escaped from Wara.  I might have been.  But I—­I wasn’t prepared to pay the possible price.”

She was still looking at him with those aloof, tragic eyes of hers.  “I don’t quite understand,” she said, “I never did understand—­exactly—­why Nick was chosen to protect me.  I always wished it had been you.”

“It ought to have been,” Grange said, with feeling.  “It should have been.  I blame myself.  But Nick is a better fighter than I. He keeps his head.  Moreover, he’s a savage in some respects.  I wasn’t savage enough.”

He smiled with a hint of apology.

Muriel repressed a shudder at his words.  “I don’t understand,” she said again.