quality, or characteristic, who for one reason or another pleased him, to which one side or another of his nature responded.  He had often thought that if he could make up a composite woman of all of them he might be in great danger of falling in love.  But now he was aware that his whole nature responded to the attraction of the girl upstairs, as a dog answers instinctively to the call of its master.  He could say to himself that she was this or that,—­brave and beautiful, but he knew that such qualities were but an insignificant part of the total effect.  His reason could find causes enough to approve her, but something more important had gone ahead, and made straight the paths of his reason, something which transcended it, and which in case of a divergence between the two, his reason could never overcome.

For, of course, the realisation of McVay and all his presence implied fell coolly upon his exaltation.  By no means had Geoffrey said to himself in so many words that he was in love,—­far less had anything so definite as marriage crossed his mind.  He was too much in love to be so practical.  He only knew that McVay’s mere existence was a contamination and a tragedy.

He had been sitting thus for some time, when he heard her step on the stairs.  He rose and met her in the hall, whence he could still keep his eye on McVay’s studious figure in the library.

She was dressed in her sables ready for departure.

[Illustration:  SHE WAS DRESSED IN HIS SISTER’S SABLES—­READY FOR DEPARTURE]

They looked at each other a moment in silence, he appealingly, she, with a cold blankness that seemed to say that not even a look could make her take further notice of him as a living being.

“Have you really been thinking that I wanted to turn you out?” he said, with directness.

“I have not been thinking about the matter at all,” she answered, turning her head a little aside from his direct gaze.  “But I do think so of course.  After all why should you not wish it?”

“You think me likely to want anything that would part us—­that is the way my manner strikes you?” He was surprised to find his voice not absolutely steady.

She favoured him with a short stare from under her lids.  “You seem to forget that I have your own word that you insisted on our going.  Possibly you have changed your mind, but I have made mine up.”  She made a motion as if to pass in, and go on toward the library.

“I have changed so completely since I saw you,” said Geoffrey, “that I scarcely recognise life in this—­this ecstasy.  That is the only change.  Am I likely to turn you out when I have been waiting all my life for you to come?”

It had been with her own dream, her own credulity with which she had been fighting quite as much as with Holland, and the charm began to work once again.  She said very coolly: 

“You are very kind, but as you said, we ought to be starting,—­or have you forgotten saying that?”