“Do you know who that woman was?”

“I have never heard her name,” she answered.

I found courage to lift my eyes and look at her.

“May I ask when you are going to be married?”

Her eyes fell.  The question did not seem to please her.

“I do not know,” she said.  “We have not spoken of that yet.  Everything is very vague.”

“Colonel Ray is coming down here, of course?” I remarked.

“Not to my knowledge,” she declared.  “Not at any rate until the next meeting of the Council.  I shall be back in town before then.”

“I begin to believe,” I said, with a grim smile, “that your brother was right.”

“My brother right?”

“He finds you enigmatic!  You become engaged to a man one day, and you leave him the next—­without apparent reason.”

She was obviously disturbed.  A slight wave of trouble passed over her face.  Her eyes failed to meet mine.

“That I cannot altogether explain to you,” she said.  “There are reasons why I should come, but apart from them this place is very dear to me.  I think that whenever anything has happened to me I have wanted to be here.  You are a man, and you will not altogether understand this.”

“Why not?” I protested.  “We, too, have our sentiment, the sentiment of places as well as of people.  If I could choose where to die I think that it would be here, with my windows wide open and the roar of the incoming tide in my ears.”

“For a young man,” she remarked, looking across at me, “I should consider you rather a morbid person.”

“There are times,” I answered, “when I feel inclined to agree with you.  To-night is one of them.”

“That,” she said coolly, “is unfortunate.  You have been over-working.”

“I am worried by a problem,” I told her.  “Tell me, are you a great believer in the sanctity of human life?”

“What a question!” she murmured.  “My own life, at any rate, seems to me to be a terribly important thing.”

“Suppose you had a friend,” I said, “who was one night attacked in a quiet spot by a man who sought his life, say, for the purpose of robbery.  Your friend was the stronger and easily defended himself.  Then he saw that his antagonist was a man of ill repute, an evildoer, a man whose presence upon the earth did good to no one.  So he took him by the throat and deliberately crushed the life out of him.  Was your friend a murderer?”

She smiled at me—­that quiet, introspective smile which I knew so well.

“Does the end justify the means?  No, of course not.  I should have been very sorry for my friend; but if indeed there is a Creator, it is He alone who has power to take back what He has given.”

“Your friend, then—­”

“Don’t call him that!”

I rose up and moved towards the door.  I think that she saw something in my face which checked any attempt she might have made to detain me.