Conning, instead of plunging into his confession, looked at her in such a protecting, yearning way that Lynda’s eyes fell, and the soft colour slowly crept in her cheeks.

In the stillness, that neither knew how to break, Truedale noticed the gown Lynda wore.  It was blue and clinging.  The whiteness of her slim arms showed through the loose sleeves; the round throat was bare and girlish in its drooping curve.

For one mad moment Truedale tried to stifle his conscience.  Why should he not have this love and happiness that lay close to him?  In what was he different from the majority of men?  Then he thought—­as others before him had thought—­that, since the race must be preserved, the primal impulses should not be denied.  They outlived everything; they rallied from shock—­even death; they persisted until extinction; and here was this sweet woman with all her gracious loveliness near him.  He loved her!  Yes, strange as it seemed even then to him, Truedale acknowledged that he loved her with the love, unlike yet like the love that had been too rudely awakened in the lonely woods when he had been still incapable of understanding it.

Then the storm outside reached his consciousness and awakened memories that hurt and stung him.

No.  He was not as many men who could take and take and find excuse.  The very sincerity of the past and future must prove itself, now, in this throbbing, vital present.  Only so could he justify himself and his belief in goodness.  He must open his heart and soul to the woman beside him.  There was no other alternative.

But first they dined together across the hall.  Truedale noted every special dish—­the meal was composed of his favourite viands.  The intimacy of sitting opposite Lynda, the smiling pleasure of old Thomas who served them, combined to lure him again from his stern sense of duty.

Why?  Why? his yearning pleaded.  Why should he destroy his own future happiness and that of this sweet, innocent woman for a whim—­that was what he tried to term it—­of conscience?  Why, there were men, thousands of them, who would call him by a harsher name than he cared to own, if he followed such a course; and yet—­then Truedale looked across at Lynda.

“A woman should have clear vision and choice,” his reason commanded, and to this his love agreed.

But alone with Lynda, in the library later, the conflict was renewed.  Never had she been so sweet, so kind.  The storm beat against the house and instead of interfering, seemed to hold them close and—­together.  It no longer aroused in Truedale recollections that smarted.  It was like an old familiar guide leading his thought into ways sacred and happy.  Then suddenly, out of a consciousness that knew neither doubt nor fear, he said: 

“You and I, Lyn, were never afraid of truth, were we?”

“Never.”

She was knitting again—­knitting feverishly and desperately.