“Dick?  Dick coming home?” Philippa cried, springing up from her reclining position.

“Dick?” Helen faltered, her work lying unheeded in her lap.  “Mr. Lessingham, do you mean it?  Is it possible?”

“It is not only possible,” Lessingham assured them, “but I believe that it will come to pass.  I have had to exercise a little duplicity, but I fancy that it has been successful.  I have insisted that without help from an influential person in Dreymarsh, I cannot bring my labours here to a satisfactory conclusion, and I have named as the price of that help, Richard’s absolute and immediate freedom.  I heard only this morning that there would be no difficulty.”

Helen snatched up her work and groped her way towards the door.

“I will come back in a few minutes,” she promised, her voice a little broken.

Lessingham, who had opened the door for her, returned to his place.  There were no tears in Philippa’s brilliant eyes, but there was a faint patch of colour in her cheeks, and her lips were not quite steady.  She caught at his hands.

“Oh, my dear, dear friend!” she said.  “If only that little nightmare part of you did not exist.  If only you could be just what you seem, and one could feel that you were there in our lives for always!  I feel that I want to talk to you so much, to you and not the sham you.  What shall I call you?”

“Bertram, please,” he whispered.

“Then Bertram, dear,” she went on, “for my sake, because you have really become dear to me, because my heart aches at the thought of your danger, and because—­see how honest I am—­I am a little afraid of myself—­will you go away?  The thought of your danger is like a nightmare to me.  It all seems so absurd and unreasonable —­I mean that the danger which I fear should be hanging over you.  But I think that there is just a little something back of your brain of which you have never spoken, which it was your duty to keep to yourself, and it is just that something which brings the danger.”

“I am not afraid for myself, Philippa,” he told her.  “I took a false step in life when I came here.  What it was that attracted me I do not know.  I think it was the thought of that wild ride amongst the clouds, and the starlight.  It seemed such a wonderful beginning to any enterprise.  And, Philippa, for one part of my adventure, the part which concerns you, it was a gorgeous prelude, and for the other—­well, it just does not count because I have no fear.  I have faith in my fortune, do you know that?  I believe that I shall leave this place unharmed, but I believe that if I leave it without you, I shall go back to the worst hell in which a man could ever . . .”