He staggered to his feet and looked round him with glazed eyes; he was drunk with his own emotions.  She followed his gaze; it was caught by some object above her bed.

“Hallo,” said he, “what’s my old sword doing there?  My beauty!”

“I brought it in,” said she.

“What did you do that for, eh?”

“I don’t know.  I think I thought that some day you’d walk off with it somewhere, and that if you did that, you’d never come back again.  So you see I liked to know it was hanging safe up there when I was asleep.  You don’t mind, do you?”

He muttered something about “rust” and “an outside wall.”

“It’s all right.  I’ve cleaned it myself.  I used to take it down and look at it every day.”

“When did you do that, Molly?”

“All the time you were away.”

“Good God!” He took the sword down from the nail where it hung by a red cord.

“You won’t find a speck of dust on it anywhere,” said she.

He had drawn the sword from its scabbard and laid it across his knee.  He felt its edge; he drew his finger down the long groove that ran along the center of the blade; his gaze rested almost passionately on the floral arabesque that fringed that bed of the river of blood.  Not a spot of rust from hilt to point; the scabbard, too, was bright and clean.

He held up the sword, still looking at it with the eyes of a lover; a quick turn of his wrist, and it leapt and flashed in the sun.

He turned to his wife, smiling.  “Isn’t she a beauty?” said he.

Fear gripped her heart.  She may have had shadowy notions of Tyson’s conjugal infidelities, but she had a very clear idea of the power of her rival, the sword.  She did not know that he was merely moved by the spirit of Henley’s verse.

“Take it away,” she said; “I don’t like the look of it.”

“Well, it’s not a nice thing to have hanging over your head.”

He took it away and hung it in its old place in the dining-room.

And Mrs. Nevill Tyson was content.  Though there was not a sign or a hope that her beauty would be restored to her, she was content.  What was more, she was positively glad that it was gone, regarding the loss of it as the ransom for Tyson’s soul.

She was growing stronger every day now, and they were full of plans for their future.  No attempt had been made to repair the damage done by the fire.  It was settled—­so far as anything was settled—­that they were to let the flat, let Thorneytoft too, and go away from London, from England perhaps, to some Elysium to be agreed on by them both.  It was to be a second honeymoon—­or was it a third?  There was nothing like beginning all over again from the very beginning.  They talked of the Riviera.

In three weeks’ time from the date of the fire she was well enough to be moved into the dining-room.  Nevill carried her.  They had to go through the empty drawing-room, and as they passed they stopped and looked round the desolate place.  It struck them both that this was the scene of that terrible last act of the drama of the old life.