Hilary Chayne stayed away from Dorsetshire for ten complete days; and though the hours crept by, dilatory as idlers at a street corner, he obtained some poor compensation by reflecting upon his fine diplomacy.  In less than a week he would surely be missed; by the time that ten days had passed the sensation might have become simply poignant.  So for ten days he wandered about the Downs of Sussex with an aching heart, saying the while, “It serves her right.”  On the morning of the eleventh he received a letter from the War Office, bidding him call on the following afternoon.

“That will just do,” he said.  “I will go down to Weymouth to-day, and I will return to London to-morrow.”  And with an unusual lightness of spirit, which he ascribed purely to his satisfaction that he need punish Sylvia no longer, he started off upon his long journey.  He reached the house of the Running Water by six o’clock in the evening; and at the outset it seemed that his diplomacy had been sagacious.

He was shown into the library, and opposite to him by the window Sylvia stood alone.  She turned to him a white terror-haunted face, gazed at him for a second like one dazed, and then with a low cry of welcome came quickly toward him.  Chayne caught her outstretched hands and all his joy at her welcome lay dead at the sight of her distress.  “Sylvia!” he exclaimed in distress.  He was hurt by it as he had never thought to be hurt.

“I am afraid!” she said, in a trembling whisper.  He drew her toward him and she yielded.  She stood close to him and very still, touching him, leaning to him like a frightened child.  “Oh, I am afraid,” she repeated; and her voice appealed piteously for sympathy and a little kindness.

In Chayne’s mind there was suddenly painted a picture of the ice-slope on the Aiguille d’Argentiere.  A girl had moved from step to step, across that slope, looking down its steep glittering incline without a tremor.  It was the same girl who now leaned to him and with shaking lips and eyes tortured with fear cried, “I am afraid.”  By his recollection of that day upon the heights Chayne measured the greatness of her present trouble.

“Why, Sylvia?  Why are you afraid?”

For answer she looked toward the open window.  Chayne followed her glance and this was what he saw:  The level stretch of emerald lawn, the stream running through it and catching in its brown water the red light of the evening sun, the great beech trees casting their broad shadows, the high garden walls with the dusky red of their bricks glowing amongst fruit trees, and within that enclosure pacing up and down, in and out among the shadows of the trees, Garratt Skinner and Walter Hine.  Yet that sight she must needs have seen before.  Why should it terrify her beyond reason now?

“Do you see?” Sylvia said in a low troubled voice.  For once distress had mastered her and she spoke without her usual reticence.  “There can be no friendship between those two.  No real friendship!  You have but to see them side by side to be sure of it.  It is pretence.”