“What you’ve got,” he corrected gravely.  “Yes, you can.”

She flung out her hands with a wide gesture.  “But I haven’t got it!  I never had it!  He took me out of pity.  He never—­pretended to love me.”

“No,” said Larpent, with grim certitude.  “He isn’t pretending this time.”

She stared at him, wide-eyed, motionless.  “Not pretending?  What do you mean?  Please—­what do you mean?”

He held out his hand.  “Good-bye!” he said abruptly.  “I mean—­just that.”

Her lips were parted to say more, but something in his face or action checked her.  She put her hand into his.  “Good-bye!” she said.

He held her hand for a moment, then, moved by some hint of forlornness in the clear eyes, he bent, as he had bent at the Castle on that summer evening weeks before, and lightly touched her forehead with his lips.

“Oh, that’s nice of you,” said Toby quickly.  “Thank you for that.”

“Don’t thank me for anything!” said Larpent.  “Play a straight game, that’s all!”

And with the words he left her finally, striding away over the sand with that careless sailor’s gait of his, gazing always far ahead of him out to the dim horizon.  Perhaps as long as he lived his look would never again dwell upon anything nearer.

CHAPTER X

IN THE NAME OF LOVE

“It’s been—­a funny game,” said Saltash, with a wry grimace.  “We’ve both of us been so damned subtle that it seems to me we’ve ended up in much the same sort of hole that we started in.”

“But you’re not going to stay in it,” said Maud.

He turned and looked down at her, one eyebrow cocked at a comic angle. “Ma belle reine, if you can help us to climb out, you will earn my undying gratitude.”

She met his look with her steadfast eyes.  “Charlie, do you know that night after night she cries as if her poor little heart were broken?”

Saltash’s eyebrow descended again.  He scowled hideously. “Mais pourquoi? I have not broken it.  I have never even made love to her.”

Maud’s face was very compassionate.  “Perhaps that is why.  She is so young—­so forlorn—­and so miserable.  Is it quite impossible for you to forgive her?”

“Forgive her!” said Saltash.  “Does she want to be forgiven?”

“She is fretting herself ill over it,” Maud said.  “I can’t bear to see her.  No, she has told me nothing—­except that she is waiting for you to throw her off—­to divorce her.  Charlie, you wouldn’t do that even if you could!”

Saltash was silent; the scowl still upon his face.

“Tell me you wouldn’t!” she urged.

His odd eyes met hers with a shifting gleam of malice.  “There is only one reason for which I would do that, ma chere,” he said.  “So she has not told you why she ran away with my friend Spentoli?”

Maud shook her head.  “She does not speak of it at all.  I only know that she was unspeakably thankful to Jake for protecting her from him.”