“I’ll tell you the truth!” she said, a little wildly.  “I—­I would have gone with him.  I offered—­I begged—­to go.  But he—­he sent me back.”

“Why?” Again that deadly quietness of utterance, as though, indeed, a dead man spoke.

Her throat began to work spasmodically, though she had no desire to weep.  She felt as if her heart were bleeding from a mortal wound.

With an effort that nearly choked her, she made reply.

“He said—­it was—­my duty.”

“Your duty!” He repeated the word deliberately.  Though the devil had gone out of his eyes, she could not meet them any longer.  Not that she feared to do so; but the pain at her heart was intolerable, and it was his look, his voice, that made it so.

Almost as if he divined this, he turned quietly from her.  He walked to the window and opened it wide, as if he felt suffocated.  The wind was moaning desolately through the trees.  There was the scent of coming rain in the air.

He spoke with his back to her, without apparent effort.  “I release you from your duty,” he said.  “Go to him!  Go to him—­now!”

She gazed at him, dumbfounded, not breathing.  But he remained motionless, his hands clenched, his face to the night.

“Go to him!” he repeated.  “I shall set you free—­at once.  Go—­and tell him so!”

Then, as still she neither moved nor spoke, he slowly turned and looked at her.

From head to foot she felt his eyes comprehend her, and from head to foot, under his look, she shuddered.  She spoke no word; she was as one paralysed.

Very quietly he pulled the window to behind him, still with his eyes upon her.  In that moment he was complete master of himself.  He stood aloof, shrouded, as it were, in an icy calm.  She had no clue to his thoughts.  She only knew that by some means, inexplicable and irresistible, he bound her even as he set her free.

“You understand me?” he said, his voice cold, level, pitilessly distinct.  “It is my last word upon the subject.  You and I have done with each other.  Go!”

It was literally his last word.  As he uttered it, his eyes fell away from her.  He crossed the room with even, unhurried tread, opened the intervening door that led into his own, passed through with no backward glance, and shut it steadily behind him.

As for Chris, she stood numbly gazing after him till only the panels of the door met her look.  And then, her strength leaving her, without sound she sank downwards and lay crumpled, inanimate, broken, upon the floor.

PART IV

CHAPTER I

THE REFUGEE

Autumn on a Yorkshire moor.

Hilda Davenant leaned back and looked from her sketch to the moor with slight dissatisfaction in her calm eyes.

“What’s the matter with it?” said Lord Percy.