“I can’t help it.  Roger and I never see things in the same light, and—­and oh, Sandy, you might try to understand!” she ended appealingly.

“I think I do,” he returned.  “But it isn’t cricket, Nan.  You can kick me out of the house if you like for saying it, but I don’t think you ought to have Maryon Rooke around so much.”

She flushed hotly.

“He’s painting my portrait,” she protested.

“Taking a jolly long time over it, too—­and making love to you in the intervals, I suppose.”

“Sandy!”

“Well, isn’t he?” Sandy’s green eyes met hers unflinchingly.

“Anyway, I’m not in love with him.”

“I should hope not,” he observed drily, “seeing that you’re going to be Mrs. Trenby.”

She gave an odd little laugh.

“That wouldn’t make an insuperable barrier, would it?  I don’t suppose—­love—­notices whether we’re married or single when it comes along.”

Something in the quality of her voice filled him with a sudden sense of fear.  Hitherto he had attributed the trouble between Nan and Roger entirely to the difference in their temperaments.  Now, for the first time, a new light was flashed upon the matter.  Her tone was so sharply bitter, like that of one chafing against some actual happening, that his mind leaped to the possibility that there might be some more tangible force arrayed against Roger’s happiness.  And if this were the case, if Nan’s love were really given elsewhere, then, knowing her as he did, Sandy foresaw the likelihood of some rash and headlong ending to it all.

He was silent, pondering this aspect of the matter.  She watched him curiously for a few moments, then, driven, by one of those strange impulses which sometimes fling down all the barriers of reserve, she broke into rapid speech.

“You needn’t grudge me Maryon’s friendship!  I’ve lost everything in the world worth having—­everything real, I mean.  Sometimes I feel as though I can’t bear it any longer!  And Maryon interests me . . . he’s a sort of mental relation. . . .  When I’m with him I can forget even Peter for a little. . . .”

She broke off, pacing restlessly backwards and forwards, her hands interlocked, her face set in a white mask of tragedy.  All at once she came to a standstill in front of Sandy and remained staring at him with an odd kind of surprise in her eyes.

“What on earth have I been talking about?” she exclaimed, passing her hand across her forehead and peering at him questioningly.  “Sandy, have you been listening?  You shouldn’t listen to what other people are thinking.  It’s rude, you know.”  She laughed a little hysterically.  “You must just forget it all, Sandy boy.”

Sandy had been listening with a species of horror to the sudden outpouring.  He felt as though he had overheard the crying of a soul which has reached the furthest limit of its endurance.  In Nan’s disjointed, broken sentences had been revealed the whole piteous truth, and in those two short words, “Even Peter!” lay the key to all he had found so difficult to understand.  It was Peter Mallory she loved—­not Roger, nor Maryon Rooke!