‘But you were made for luxurious living,’ was Walter’s quick reply.  ’You never looked at home in the old place.  This suits you down to the ground.’

‘Do you think so?’ Gladys gave a little melancholy smile.  ’Yet so contradictory are we, that sometimes I am not at all happy nor contented here, Walter.’

‘You ought to be very happy,’ he replied a trifle sharply.  ’You have everything a woman needs to make her happy.’

’Perhaps so, and yet’—­

She paused, and hummed a little scrap of song which Walter did not catch.

‘I am becoming quite an accomplished violinist, Walter,’ she said presently.  ’I have two lessons every week; once Herr Doeller comes down, and once I go up.  Would you like to hear me play, or shall we talk?’

’I don’t know.  It would really be better for me to go away.  I can walk to the station; the walk will do me good.’

’I will not allow you to walk nor go away, Walter, even if you are as cross as two sticks; and I must say I feel rather cross myself.’

They were playing with edged tools, and Gladys was keenly conscious of it.  Her pulses were throbbing, her heart beating as it had never beat in the presence of the man to whom she had plighted her troth that very day.  A very little more, and she must have given way to hysterical sobbing, she felt so overwrought; and yet all the while she kept on her lips that gay little smile, and spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world that they should be together.  But when Walter remained silent, she came forward to the hearth quickly, and, forgetting that what was fitting in the old days was not permissible in the new, she slipped on one knee on the rug, and suddenly, laying her head down on his knee, began to cry.

’Gladys, get up!  For God’s sake, get up, or I can’t hold my tongue.  This is fearful!’

The word was none too strong.  The solitary and absorbing passion of his life, a pure and honest love for that beautiful girl, surged in his soul, and his face betrayed the curb he was putting on himself.  He had had but a poor upbringing, and his code of honour had been self-taught, but he was manly enough to be above making love to another man’s promised wife.

‘Don’t make it any harder for me,’ he said hoarsely.  ’I know you are sorry for me.  You have been always an angel to me, even when I least deserved it; but this is not the way to treat me to-night.  Let me away.’

‘Let me be selfish, Walter, just this one night,’ she said, in a low, broken voice.  ’I don’t know why I am crying, for it is a great joy to me that you are here, and that I know now, for ever, that you feel as you used to do before this cruel money parted us; there are not in all the world any friends like the old.  Forgive me if I have vexed you.’

She rose up and met his glance, which was one of infinite pity and indescribable pathos.  The greatest sorrow, the keenest disappointment which had ever come to Walter, softened him as if with a magic touch, and revealed to her his heart, which was, at least, honest and true in every throb.