So she gave her hand to Henry in a burst of exuberance and let him place it in his arm, and then lead her back into the chateau and through all the rooms, where they discussed blues and greens and stuffs and furniture and the lowering of this doorway and the heightening of that, and at last they drifted to the garden and to the lavender hedge—­but she would not take him into the summer-house or again look out on the sea.

All through her sweetness there was a note of unrest—­and Henry’s fine senses told him so—­and this left the one drop of bitterness in his otherwise blissful cup.

Michael meanwhile was expending his energy and his passion in swift movement in the boat—­but after a while he rested on his oars and then he began to think.

There was no use in going on with the game after all—­he ought to go away at once.  If he stayed and saw her any more he would not be able to leave her at all.  He knew he would only break his promise to Henry—­tell Sabine that he had fallen madly in love with her—­implore her again to forgive him for everything in the past and let them begin afresh.  But he was faced with the horrible thought of the anguish to Henry—­Henry, his old friend, who trusted him and who was ten times more worthy of this dear woman than he was himself.

He had never been so full of impotency and misery in his life—­not even on that morning in June when he woke and found Sabine had left him—­defied him and gone—­after everything.  Pure rage had come to his aid then—­but now he had only remorse and longing—­and anger with fate.

“It must all depend upon whether or no she loves Henry,” he said to himself at last—­“and this I will make her tell me this very afternoon.”

But when he got back and went into the garden he happened to witness a scene.

Sabine—­overcome by Lord Fordyce’s goodness, had let him hold her arm while her head was perilously near to his shoulder.  It all looked very intimate and lover-like when seen from afar.  The greatest pain Michael Arranstoun had ever experienced came into his heart, and without waiting a second he turned on his heel and went back to the house.  Here he had a bath and changed his clothes, while his servant packed, and then, with the help of Madame Imogen, he looked up a train.  Yes, there was a fast one which went to Paris from their nearest little town—­he could just catch it by ordering Henry’s motor—­this he promptly did—­and leaving the best excuses he could invent with Madame Imogen, he got in and departed a few minutes before his hostess and Lord Fordyce came back to tea at five.

He had written a short note to Sabine—­which Nicholas handed to her.

She opened it with trembling fingers; this was all it was: 

I understand—­and I will get the divorce as soon as the law will allow, and I will try to arrange that Henry need never know.  I would like you just to have come to Arranstoun once more—­perhaps I can persuade Henry to bring you there in the autumn.

Michael Arranstoun.