“So for a week I was glad.  But this morning I received your second letter, Sylvia.  It came too late, my dear.  There was no time to obtain a substitute.”

Sylvia turned to him with a startled face.

“When do you go?”

“Very soon.”

“When?”

The words had to be spoken.

“To-morrow morning.  I catch the first train from Weymouth to Southampton.  We sail from Southampton at noon.”

Habit came again to her assistance.  She turned away from him so that he might not see her face, and he went on: 

“Had there been more time, I could have made arrangements.  Some one else could have gone.  As it is—­” He broke off suddenly, and bending toward her cried:  “Sylvia, say that I must go.”

But she could not bring herself to that.  She was minded to hold with both hands the good thing which had come to her this night.  She shook her head.  He sought to turn her face to his, but she looked stubbornly away.

“And when will you return?” she asked.

“In a few months, Sylvia.”

“When?”

“In June.”  And she counted off the months upon her fingers.

“So after to-night,” she said, in a low voice, “I shall not see you any more for all these months.  The winter must pass, and the spring, too.  Oh, Hilary!” and she turned to him with a quivering face and whispered piteously:  “Don’t go, my dear.  Don’t go!”

“Say that I must go!” he insisted, and she laughed with scorn.  Then the laughter ceased and she said: 

“There will be danger?”

“None,” he cried.

“Yes—­from sickness, and—­” her voice broke in a sob—­“I shall not be near.”

“I will take great care, Sylvia.  Be sure of that,” he answered.  “Now that I have you, I will take great care,” and leaning toward her, as she sat with her hands clasped upon her knees, he touched her hair with his lips very tenderly.

“Oh, Hilary, what will I do?  Till you come back to me!  What will I do?”

“I have thought of it, Sylvia.  I thought this.  It might be better if, for these months—­they will not pass quickly, my dear, either for you or me.  They will be long slow months for both of us.  That’s the truth, my dear.  But since they must be got through, I thought it might be better if you went back to your mother.”

Sylvia shook her head.

“It would be better,” he urged, with a look toward the house.

“I can’t do that.  Afterward, in a year’s time—­when we are together, I should like very much for us both to go to her.  But my mother forbade it when I went away from Chamonix.  I was not to come whining back to her, those were her words.  We parted altogether that night.”

She spoke with an extreme simplicity.  There was neither an appeal for pity nor a hint of any bitterness in her voice.  But the words moved Chayne all the more on that account.  He would be leaving a very lonely, friendless girl to battle through the months of his absence by herself; and to battle with what?  He was not sure.  But he had not taken so lightly the shadow on the ceiling and the opening door.