“At last we are alone.  My gracious! how I’ve looked forward to this little talk with you, all through that long dinner, and the formal talk with the men afterwards, listening to infernal politics and still more infernal hunting.  You didn’t expect to meet me, did you?”

“No; Lady Ascott said nothing about your being here when she came to the concert.”

“And perhaps you wouldn’t have come if you had known I was here?”

“Is that why you didn’t come to the concert?”

“Well, Evelyn, I suppose it was.  You’ll forgive me the trickery, won’t you?” She took his hand and held it for a moment.  “That touch of your hand means more to me than anything in the world.”  A cloud came into her face which he saw and it pained him to see it.  “Lady Ascott wrote saying she intended to ask you to Thornton Grange, so I wrote at once asking her if she could put me up; she guessed an estrangement, and being a kind woman, was anxious to put it right.”

“An estrangement, Owen?  But there is no estrangement between us?”

“No estrangement?”

“Well, no, Owen, not what I should call an estrangement.”

“But you sent me away, saying I shouldn’t see you for three months.  Now three months have passed—­haven’t I been obedient?”

“Have three months passed?”

“Yes; It was in August you sent me away and now we are in November.”

“Three months all but a fortnight.”

“The last time I saw you was the day you went to Wimbledon to sing for the nuns.  They have captured you; you are still singing for them.”

“You mustn’t say a word against the nuns,” and she told anecdotes about the convent which interested her, but which provoked him even to saying under his breath, “Miserable folk!”

“I won’t allow you to speak like that against my friends.”

Owen apologised, saying they had taken her from him.  “And you can’t expect me to sympathise with people or with an idea that has done this?  It wouldn’t be human, and I don’t think you would like me any better if I did—­now would you, Evelyn?  Can you say that you would, honestly, hand upon your heart?—­if a heart is beating there still.”

“A heart is beating—­”

“I mean if a human heart is beating.”

“It seems to me, Owen, I am just as human, more human than ever, only it is a different kind of humanity.”

“Pedantry doesn’t suit women, nor does cruelty; cruelty suits no one and you were very cruel when we parted.”

“Yes, I suppose I was, and it is always wrong to be cruel.  But I had to send you away; if I hadn’t I should have been late for the concert.  You don’t realise, Owen, you can’t realise—­” And as she said those words her face seemed to freeze, and Owen thought of the idea within her turning her to ice.

“The wind!  Isn’t it uncanny?  You don’t know the glen?  One of the most beautiful in Scotland.”  And he spoke of the tall pines at the end of it, the finest he had ever seen, and hoped that not many would be blown down during the night.  “Such a storm as this only happens once in ten years.  Good God, listen!” Like a savage beast the wind seemed to skulk, and to crouch....  It sprang forward and seized the house and shook it.  Then it died away, and there was stillness for a few minutes.