“Oh, you’re mad—­you’re mad!”

With a struggle she freed herself from his grasp and stood away from him.

“Listen,” she said.  “Listen to me and then you’ll understand what you’re asking.  I’m not happy—­that’s true.  But it’s my own fault, not Roger’s.  I ought never to have given him my promise.  There was someone else—­”

“Mallory!” broke in Rooke.

“Yes—­Peter.  It’s quite simple.  We met too late.  But I learned then what love means.  Once I asked him—­I begged him—­to take me away with him.  And he wouldn’t.  I’d have gone to the ends of the earth with him.  I’d go to-morrow if he’d take me!  But he won’t.  And he never will.”  She paused, panting a little.  “And now,” she went on, with a hard laugh, “I don’t think you’ll ask me again to go away with you!”

“Yes, I shall.  Mallory may be able to live at such high altitudes that he can throw over his life’s happiness—­and yours, too—­for a scruple.  I can’t—­and I don’t want to.  I love you, and I’m selfish enough to be ready to take you any minute that you’ll come.”

Throwing one arm about her shoulders, he turned her face up to his.

“Don’t you understand?” he went on hoarsely.  “I’m flesh and blood man, and you’re the woman I love.”

The hazel eyes blazed with a curious light, like flame, and she shivered a little, fighting the man’s personality—­battling against that strange kinship of temperament by which he always drew her.

“I can wait,” he said, quietly releasing her.  “You can’t go on long as you’re living now; the tension’s too high.  And when you’re through with it—­come to me, Nan!  I’d at least make you happier than Trenby ever will.”

Without reply she moved towards the door and he stood aside, allowing her to pass out of the room in silence.

In the hall she encountered Roger, who had ridden over, accompanied by a trio of dogs, and the sight of his big, tweed-clad figure, so solidly suggestive of normal, everyday things, filled her with an unexpected sense of relief.  He might not be the man she loved, but he was, at any rate, a sheet-anchor in the midst of the emotional storms that were blowing up around her.

To-day, however, his face wore a clouded, sullen expression when he greeted her.

“What have you been doing with yourself?” he asked, his eyes fastening suspiciously on her flushed cheeks.

She answered him with a poor attempt at her usual nonchalance.

“Oh, Maryon came over this morning, so I’ve been sitting to him.”

“All day?  I don’t like it too well.”  The look of displeasure deepened on his face.  “People will talk.  You know what country folks are like.”

Nan’s eyes flashed.

“Let them talk!  I’m not going to regulate my conduct according to the villagers’ standard of propriety,” she replied indignantly.

“It isn’t merely the villagers,” pursued Roger.  “Isobel said, only yesterday, she thought it was rather indiscreet.”