“If only you had come with me on that first day,” he cried.

“I will have to-night to look back upon, my dear,” she said.  “That will be something.  Oh, if I had not asked you to come back!  If you had gone away and said nothing!  What would I have done then?  As it is, I will know that you are thinking of me—­” and suddenly she turned to him, and held him away from her in a spasm of fear while her eyes searched his face.  But in a moment they melted and a smile made her lips beautiful.  “Oh, yes, I can trust you,” she said, and she nestled against him contentedly like a child.

For a little while they sat thus, and then her eyes sought the garden and the house at her feet.  It seemed that the sinister plot was not, after all, to develop in that place of quiet and old peace without her for its witness.  It seemed that she was to be kept by some fatality close-fettered to the task, the hopeless task, which she would now gladly have foregone.  And she wondered whether, after all, she was in some way meant to watch the plot, perhaps, after all, to hinder it.

“Hilary,” she said, “you remember that evening at the Chalet de Lognan?”

“Do I remember it?”

“You explained to me a law—­that those who know must use their knowledge, if by using it they can save a soul, or save a life.”

“Yes,” he said, vaguely remembering that he had spoken in this strain.

“Well, I have been trying to obey that law.  Do you understand?  I want you to understand.  For when I have been unkind, as I have been many times, it was, I think, because I was not obeying it with very much success.  And I should like you to believe and know that.  For when you are away, you will remember, in spite of yourself, the times when I was bitter.”

Her words made clear to him many things which had perplexed him during these last weeks.  Her friendship for Walter Hine became intelligible, and as though to leave him no shadow of doubt, she went on.

“You see, I knew the under side of things, and I seemed to see the opportunity to use the knowledge.  So I tried to save”; and whether it was life or soul, or both, she did not say.  She did not add that so far she had tried in vain; she did not mention the bottle of cocaine, or the dread which of late had so oppressed her.  She was careful of her lover.  Since he had to go, since he needs must be absent, she would spare him anxieties and dark thoughts which he could do nothing to dispel.  But even so, he obtained a clearer insight into the distress which she had suffered in that house, and the bravery with which she had borne it.

“Sylvia,” he said, “I had no thought, no wish, that what I said should stay with you.”

“Yet it did,” she answered, “and I was thankful.  I am thankful even now.  For though I would gladly give up all the struggle now, if I had you instead; since I have not you, I am thankful for the law.  It was your voice which spoke it, it came from you.  It will keep you near to me all through the black months until you come back.  Oh, Hilary!” and the brave argument spoken to enhearten herself and him ended suddenly in a most wistful cry.  Chayne caught her to him.