“I can’t go back—­I can’t indeed!  Why should I?  I’ve only made Roger either furious or wretched ever since we were engaged.  It isn’t as if I could do any good by going back!”

“Isn’t it something good to have kept faith?” There was a stern note in his voice.

She looked at him wistfully.

“If it had been you, Peter. . . .  It’s easy to keep faith when one loves.”

“And are you being faithful—­even to our love?” he asked quietly.

“To our love?” she whispered.

“There is a faithfulness of the Spirit, Nan—­the only faithfulness possible to those who are set apart as we are.”

He broke off and stood silent a moment, looking down at her with hard, hurt eyes.  Presently he went on: 

“That was all we might keep, you and I—­our faith.  Honour binds each of us to someone else.  But”—­his voice vibrating—­“honour doesn’t bind you to Maryon Rooke!  If you go with him, you betray our love—­the part of it that nothing can touch or spoil if we so will it.  You won’t do that, Nan. . . .  You can’t do it!”

She knew, then, that she would have to go back, go back and keep faith with Roger—­and keep that deeper faith which love itself demanded.

Her head drooped, and she stretched out her hands as though seeking something of which they might lay hold.  Peter took them into his and held them.

After a while a slight tremor ran through her body, and she drew herself away from him, relinquishing his hands.

“I’ll go back,” she said.  “You’ve won, Peter.  I can’t . . . hurt . . . our love.”

To Sandy the time seemed immeasurably long as he waited on the further side of the closed door, but at last they came to him—­Peter, stern and rather strained-looking, and Nan with tear-bright eyes and a face from which every vestige of colour had vanished.

“Get a taxi, will you, Sandy?” said Peter.

Perhaps Sandy’s face asked the question his lips dared not utter, for Nan nodded to him with a twisted little smile.

“Yes, Sandy boy, I’m going back.”

“Thank God!”

He wrung her hands and then went off in search of a taxi.  Nan glanced round her a trifle nervously.

“Maryon may be here at any moment,” she said.  “Something’s gone wrong with the car and he’s taken it round to the garage to get it put right.”

“We shall be off directly,” answered Peter.  “See”—­he pointed down the street—­“here comes Sandy with a taxi for us.”  He spoke reassuringly, as though to a frightened child.

In a few minutes they had started, the taxi slipping swiftly away through the lamp-lit streets.  It had turned a corner and was out of sight by the time the parlourmaid, hearing the sound of the street door closing, had hurried upstairs only to find an empty studio.  Nor could she give Rooke, on his return, the slightest information as to what had become of his guests—­the lady, or the two gentlemen who, she told him, had called shortly afterwards, apparently expecting to find Miss Davenant there.