“But why, in thunder, should she care?” he demanded.

“She?” there was no trouble in her voice, only an indifferent question.

“Oh, it’s Jennie Alta, of course—­she’s perfectly capable of such a thing.”  Then, reaching out, he drew Laura into his arms with a confidence which had the air, she thought, of taking the situation almost too entirely for granted—­of accepting too readily her attitude as well as his possession of her.  “My darling girl, what a regular brick you are!” he said.

Though she realised, as he spoke, that this was the reward of her silence and her struggle, she told herself, in the next breath that, in some way, it was all inadequate.  She had expected more than a phrase, and the very fact that the note of earnestness was absent from his voice but made her desire the sound of it the more passionately.  Again she felt the baffled sensation which came to her in moments of their closest intimacy.  Had his soul, in truth, eluded her for the last time?  And was there in the profoundest emotion always a distance which it was forever impossible to bridge?  Yet the uncertainty, the very lack of a fuller understanding only added fervour to the passion that burned in her heart.

“It’s all over now, so we may as well warm ourselves by the failure of her deviltry,” he observed presently, as he flung the crumpled paper into the fire.  “I’m downright sorry she’ll never know how little harm she’s done.”

“It might, I suppose, have been worse,” suggested Laura.

“Well, I suppose so—­and you mean me to believe that you didn’t even read it?” he enquired with tender gayety.

She gave him her eyes frankly as an answer to his appeal for faith.  “Why should I?  I love you,” she replied.

For an instant—­a single sufficing instant—­he met her look with an earnestness that was equal to her own.  The man in him, she almost cried out in her exultation, was touched at last.

“May God grant that your confidence will never fail me,” he rejoined a little sadly.

“When that comes it will be time to die,” was her answer.

Taking her hand in his he held it in a close pressure for several minutes.  Then the earnestness she had arrested fled from her touch, and when he spoke again she could not tell whether his words were uttered sincerely or simply as the outcome of his sarcastic humour.

“If you were a flesh-and-blood woman instead of an eccentric sprite,” he remarked, “I suppose you’d want me to make a clean breast of the whole affair, but I can’t because, to tell the truth, I’ve forgotten everything about it.”

“Then you didn’t honestly love her, so it doesn’t matter.”