“Did you love Edith Challoner so much as that?”

A glance from Oswald’s eye, sadder than any tear.

“So that you cannot be reconciled?”

A gesture.  Oswald’s words were always few.

Orlando’s frown deepened.

“Such grief I partly understand,” said he.  “But time will cure it.  Some day another lovely face—­”

“We’ll not talk of that, Orlando.”

“No, we’ll not talk of that,” acquiesced the inventor, walking away again, this time to the window.  “For you there’s but one woman; —­and she’s a memory.”

“Killed!” broke from his brother’s lips.  “Slain by her own hand under an impulse of wildness and terror!  Can I ever forget that?  Do not expect it, Orlando.”

“Then you do blame me?” Orlando turned and was looking full at Oswald.

“I blame your unreasonableness and your overweening pride.”

Orlando stood a moment, then moved towards the door.  The heaviness of his step smote upon Oswald’s ear and caused him to exclaim: 

“Forgive me, Orlando.”  But the other cut him short with an imperative: 

“Thanks for your candour!  If her spirit is destined to stand like an immovable shadow between you and me, you do right to warn me.  But this interview must end all allusion to the subject.  I will seek and find another man to share my fortunes; (as he said this he approached suddenly, and took his papers from the other’s hand) or—­” Here he hastily retraced his steps to the door which he softly opened.  “Or” he repeated—­But though Oswald listened for the rest, it did not come.  While he waited, the other had given him one deeply concentrated look and passed out.

No heartfelt understanding was possible between these two men.

Crossing the hall, Orlando knocked at the door of Doris’ little sitting-room.

No answer, yet she was there.  He knew it in every throbbing fibre of his body.  She was there and quite aware of his presence; of this he felt sure; yet she did not bid him enter.  Should he knock again?  Never! but he would not quit the threshold, not if she kept him waiting there for hours.  Perhaps she realised this.  Perhaps she had meant to open the door to him from the very first, who can tell?  What avails is that she did ultimately open it, and he, meeting her soft eye, wished from his very heart that his impulse had led him another way, even if that way had been to the edge of the precipice—­and over.

For the face he looked upon was serene, and there was no serenity in him; rather a confusion of unloosed passions fearful of barrier and yearning tumultuously for freedom.  But, whatever his revolt, the secret revolt which makes no show in look or movement, he kept his ground and forced a smile of greeting.  If her face was quiet, it was also lovely;—­too lovely, he felt, for a man to leave it, whatever might come of his lingering.