“Why?  It’s only the living fire that matters!  Darling—­let’s come to close quarters.  You gave a bit of your warm heart to Philip, and you imagined that it meant much more than it really did.  And poor Philip all the time was determined—­cribbed and cabined—­by his past,—­and now by his boy.  We both know that if he marries anybody it will be Cynthia Welwyn; and that he would be happier and less lonely if he married her.  But so long as your life is unsettled he will marry nobody.  He remembers that your mother entrusted you to him in the firm belief that, in his uncertainty about his wife, he neither could nor would marry anybody.  So that for these two years, at any rate, he holds himself absolutely bound to his compact with her and you.”

“And the moral of that is—­” said Helena, flushing.

“Marry me!—­Nothing simpler.  Then the compact falls—­and at one stroke you bring two men into port.”

The conflict of expressions passing through her features showed her shaken.  He waited.

“Very well, Geoffrey—­” she said at last, with a long, quivering breath, as though some hostile force rent her and came out.

“If you want me so much—­take me!”

But as she spoke she became aware of the lover in him ready to spring.  She drew back instantly from his cry of joy, and his outstretched arms.

“Ah, but give me time—­dear Geoffrey, give me time!  You have my word.”

He controlled himself, warned by her agitation, and her pallor.

“Mayn’t we tell Philip—­when he comes?”

“Yes, we’ll tell Philip—­and Lucy—­to-night.  Not a word!—­till then.”  She jumped up—­“Are you going to climb that crag before tea?  I am!”

She led him breathlessly up its steep side and down again.  When they regained the inn, Geoffrey had not even such a butterfly kiss to remember as she had once given him in the lime-walk at Beechmark; and Lucy, trying in her eager affection to solve the puzzle they presented her with, had simply to give it up.

* * * * *

The day grew wilder.  Great flights of clouds came up from the west and fought the sun, and as the afternoon declined, light gusts of rain, succeeded by bursts of sunshine, began to sweep across the oak-woods.  The landlord of the inn and his sons, who had been mainly responsible for building the great bonfire on Moel Dun, and the farmers in their gigs who stopped at the inn door, began to shake their heads over the prospects of the night.  Helena, Lucy Friend, and Geoffrey spent the afternoon chiefly in fishing and wandering by the river.  Helena clung to Lucy’s side, defying her indeed to leave her, and Geoffrey could only submit, and count the tardy hours.  They made tea in a green meadow beside the stream, and immediately afterwards Geoffrey, looking at his watch, announced to Mrs. Friend that he proposed to bicycle down to Bettws to meet Lord Buntingford.