Then very quietly, very simply and touchingly, she told him the story of all that had happened, of Magda’s final intention of becoming a working member of the sisterhood, and of Lady Arabella’s letter summoning Michael back to England.

“But even when he comes,” added Gillian, “unless he is very careful—­unless he loves her in the biggest way a man can love, so that nothing else matters, he’ll lose her.  He’ll have to convince her that she means just that to him.”

Storran was silent for a long time, and when at last he spoke it was with an obvious effort.

“Listen,” he said.  “There’s something you don’t know.  Perhaps when I’ve told you, you won’t have anything more to say to me—­I don’t know.”

Gillian opened her lips in quick disclaimer, but he motioned her to be silent.

“Wait,” he said.  “Wait till you’ve heard what I have to say.  You think, and Magda thinks, that June died of a broken heart—­at least, that the shock of all that miserable business down at Stockleigh helped to kill her.”

“Yes.”  Gillian assented mechanically when he paused.

“I thought so, too, once.  It was what June’s sister told me—­told everyone.  But it wasn’t true.  She believed it, I know—­probably believes it to this day.  But, thank God, it wasn’t true!”

“How can you tell?  All that strain and heart-break just at a time when she wasn’t strong.  Oh, Dan!  We can never be sure—­sure!”

“I am sure.  Quite sure,” he said steadily.  “When I came to my senses out there in ’Frisco, I couldn’t rest under that letter from June’s sister.  It burned into me like a red-hot iron.  I was half-mad with pain, I think.  I wrote to the doctor who had attended her, but I got no answer.  Then I sailed for England, determined to find and see the man for myself.  I found him—­my letter had miscarried somehow—­and he told me that June could not have lived.  There were certain complications in her case which made it impossible.  In fact, if she had been so happy that she had longed to live—­and tried to—­it would only have made it harder for her, a rougher journey to travel.  As it was, she went easily, without fighting death—­letting go, without any effort, her hold on life.”

He ceased, and after a moment’s silence Gillian spoke in strained, horror-stricken tones.

“And you never told us!  Oh!  It was cruel of you, Dan!  You would have spared Magda an infinity of self-reproach!”

“I didn’t want to spare her.  I left her in ignorance on purpose.  I wanted her to be punished—­to suffer as she had made me suffer.”

There were tears in Gillian’s eyes.  It was terrible to her that Dan could be so bitter—­so vengefully cruel.  Yet she recognised that it had been but the natural outcome of the man’s primitive nature to pay back good for good and evil for evil.

“Then why do you tell me now?” she asked at last.