Wanda, still standing in the doorway of the conservatory, of which the warm, scented air swept out past her into the great room, watched her brother and Deulin go and close the door behind them.  She turned to Cartoner with a smile as if about to speak; but she saw his face, and she said nothing, and her own slowly grew grave.

He came towards her, upright and still and thoughtful.  She did not look at him, but past him towards the closed door.  He only looked at her with quiet, remembering eyes.  Then he went straight to the point, as was his habit.

“I was wrong,” he said, “when I said that fate could be hampered by action.  Nothing can hamper it.  For fate has brought me here again.”

He stood before her, and the attitude in some way conveyed that by the word “here” he only thought and meant near to her.  There was a strange look in her eyes of suspense and fear, and something else which needs no telling to such as have seen it, and cannot be conveyed in words to those who have not.

“A clear understanding,” he said abruptly, recalling her own words.  “That is your creed.”

She gave a little nod, and still looked past him towards the door with deep, submissive eyes.  One would have thought that she had done something wrong which was being brought home to her.  Explain the thought, who can!

“I made another mistake,” he said.  “Have been acting on it for years.  I thought that a career was everything.  I dreamed, I suppose, of an embassy—­of a viceroyalty, perhaps—­when I was quite young, and thought the world was easy to conquer.  All that . . . vanished when I saw you.  If it comes, well and good.  I should like it.  Not for my own sake.”

She made a little movement, and her eyelids flickered.  Ah! that clear understanding, which poor humanity cannot put into words!

“If it doesn’t come”—­he paused, and snapped the finger and thumb that hung quiescent at his side—­“well and good.  I shall have lived.  I shall have known what life is meant to be.  I shall have been the happiest man in the world.”

He spoke slowly in his gently abrupt way.  Practice in a difficult profession had taught him to weigh every word he uttered.  He had never been known to say more than he meant.

“There never has been anybody else,” he continued.  “All that side of life was quite blank.  The world was empty until you came and filled it, at Lady Orlay’s that afternoon.  I had come half round the world—­you had come across Europe.  And fate had fixed that I should meet you there.  At first I did not believe.  I thought it was a mistake—­that we should drift apart again.  Then came my orders to leave for Warsaw.  I knew then that you would inevitably return.  Still I tried to get out of it—­fought against it—­tried to avoid you.  And you knew what it all came to.”

She nodded again, and still did not meet his eyes.  She had not spoken to him since he entered the room.