Michael pulled himself together and laughed bitterly aloud.

“I must just never think of it, old man,” he told the dog, “or I shall go mad.”

Then he sat down again.  With what poignant regret he looked back upon his original going to China!  If only he had stayed and gone after her, that next day, and seized her again, and brought her back here to this room—­they would have had five years of happiness.  She was sweeter now far than she had been then, and he could have watched her developing, instead of her coming to perfection all alone.  That under these circumstances she might never have acquired that polish of mind, and strange dignity and reserve of manner which was one of her greatest attractions, did not strike him—­as it has been plainly said, he was not given to analysis in his judgment of things.

“I wish she had had a baby, Binko,” he remarked, when once more seated in his chair.  “Then she would have been obliged to return at once of her own accord.”

Binko grunted and slobbered his acquiescence and sympathy, with his wise old fat head poked into his master’s arm.

“You are trying to tell me that as I had gone off to China, she couldn’t have done that in any case, you old scoundrel.  And of course you are right.  But she did not try to, you know.  There was no letter from her among the hundreds which were waiting for me at Hong Kong—­or here when I got back.  She could have sent me a cable, and I would have returned like a shot from anywhere.  But she did not want me then; she wanted to be free—­and now, when she does, her hands are already tied.  The whole cursed thing is her own fault, and that is what is the biggest pain, old dog.”

Then his thoughts wandered back to their scene in Rose Forster’s sitting-room—­that was pleasure indeed!  And he leaned back in his big chair and let himself dream.  He could hear her words telling him that she loved him and could feel her soft lips pressed in passion to his own.

“My God!  I can’t bear it,” he cried at last, once more clenching his hands.

* * * * *

And so it went on through days and nights of anguish, the aspects of the case repeating themselves in endless persistence, until with all his will and his strong health and love of sport and vigorous work, the agony of desire for Sabine grew into an obsession.

Whatever sins he had committed in his life, indeed his punishment had come.

Sabine, for her part, found the days not worth living.  Nothing in life or nature stays at a standstill; if stagnation sets in, then death comes—­and so it was that her emotions for Michael did not remain the same, but grew and augmented more and more as the certainty that they were parted for ever forced itself upon her brain.

They had not been back in London a day when Mr. Parsons announced to her that at last all was going well.  Mr. Arranstoun had put the matter in train and soon she would be free.  And, shrewd American that he was, he wondered why she should get so pale.  The news did not appear to be such a very great pleasure to her after all!  Her greatest concern seemed to be that he should arrange that there should be no notice of anything in the papers.