She moved away to the tea-table, leaving Trent and Sara standing together in the bay of the window.

“So you are overcoming your distaste for visiting,” said Sara a little nervously.  “I didn’t expect to meet you here.”

His glance held hers.

“You wished it,” he answered gravely.

A sudden colour flamed up into the warm pallor of her skin.

“Are you suggesting I invited you to meet me here?” she responded, willfully misinterpreting him.  She shook her read regretfully.  “You must have misunderstood me.  I should never have imposed such a strain on your politeness.”

His eyes glinted.

“Do you know,” he said quietly, “that I should very much like to shake you?”

“I’m glad,” she answered heartily.  “It’s a devastating feeling!  You made me feel just the same the day I travelled with you.  So now we’re quits.”

“Won’t you—­please—­try to forget that day in the train?” he said quickly.  “I behaved like a bore.  I’m afraid I’ve no real excuse to offer, except that I’d been reminded of something that happened long ago—­and I wanted to be alone.”

“To enjoy the memory in solitude?” hazarded Sara flippantly.  She was still nervous and talking rather at random, scarcely heeding what she said.

A look of bitter irony crossed his face.

“Hardly that,” he said shortly, and Sara knew that somehow she had again inadvertently laid her hand upon an old hurt.  She spoke with a sudden change of voice.

“Then, as the train doesn’t hold pleasant memories for either of us, let’s forget it,” she suggested gently.

“Do you know what that implies?” he asked.  “It implies that you are willing to be friends.  Do you mean that?”—­incisively.

She nodded silently, not trusting herself to speak.

“Thank you,” he said curtly, and then Audrey Maynard’s gay voice broke across the tension of the moment.

“Mr. Trent, I simply cannot allow Sara to monopolize you any longer.  Now that we have succeeded in dragging the hermit out of his shell, we all want a share of his society, please.”

Trent turned instantly, and Sara slipped across the room and took the place Audrey had vacated by Miles’s couch.  He greeted her coming with a smile, but there were shadows of fatigue beneath his eyes, and his lips were rather white and drawn-looking.

“This is a lazy way to receive visitors, isn’t it?” he said apologetically.  “But my game leg’s given out to-day, so you must forgive me.”

Sara’s glance swept his face with quick sympathy.

“You oughtn’t to be at the ‘party’ at all,” she said.  “You look far too tired to be bothered with a parcel of chattering women.”

He smiled.

“Do you know,” he whispered humorously, “that, although you’re quite the four nicest women I know, the shameful truth is that I’m really here on behalf of the one man!  I met him yesterday in the town and booked him for this afternoon, and, having at last dislodged him from his lone pinnacle, I hadn’t the heart to leave him unsupported.”