“Why, Nance—­you look like night, when there are no stars—­what is it?” He scanned her with an assumption of jesting earnestness, palpably meant to conceal some deeper emotion.  She put a detaining hand on his arm as he was about to turn the key in the lock.

“Bernal, I haven’t time to be indirect, or beat about, or anything—­so forgive the abruptness—­were you at Mrs. Wyeth’s this afternoon?”

His ear caught the unusual note in her voice, and he was at once concerned with this rather than with her question.

“Why, what is it, Nance—­what if I was?  Are you seeing another Gratcher?”

“Bernal, quick, now—­please!  Don’t worry me needlessly!  Were you at Mrs. Wyeth’s to-day?”

Her eyes searched his face.  She saw that he was still either puzzled or confused, but this time he answered plainly,

“No—­I haven’t seen that most sightly cold lady to-day—­more’s the pity!”

She breathed one quick little sigh—­it seemed to him strangely like a sigh of relief.

“I knew you couldn’t have been.”  She laughed a little laugh of secrets.  “I was only wondering foolish wonders—­you know how Gratchers must be humoured right up to the very moment you puff them away with the deadly laugh.”

Together they went in.  Bernal stopped to talk with Aunt Bell, who was passing through the hall as they entered; while Nancy, with the manner of one not to be deflected from some set purpose, made straight for Allan’s study.

In answer to her ominously crisp little knock, she heard his “Come!” and opened the door.

He sat facing her at his desk, swinging idly from side to side in the revolving chair, through the small space the desk permitted.  Upon the blotter before him she saw that he had been drawing interminable squares, oblongs, triangles and circles, joining them to one another in aimless, wandering sequence—­his sign of a perturbed mind.

He glanced up with a look of waiting defiance which she knew but masked all his familiar artillery.

Instantly she determined to give him no opportunity to use this.  She would end matters with a rush.  He was awaiting her attack.  She would make none.

“I think there is nothing to say,” she began quickly.  “I could utter certain words, but they would mean one thing to me and other things to you—­there is no real communication possible between us.  Only remember that this—­to-day—­matters little—­I had already resolved that sooner or later I must go.  This only makes it necessary to go at once.”

She turned to the door which she had held ajar.  At her words he sat forward in his chair, the yellow stars blazing in his eyes.  But the opening was not the one he had counted upon, and before he could alter his speech to fit it, or could do more than raise a hand to detain her, she had gone.

He sat back in his chair, calculating how to meet this mood.  Then the door resounded under a double knock and Bernal came in.