“Why—­because you’ve beaten me—­you with your sweetness and courage and tolerance.  You’ve taught me that retribution and punishment are best left in—­more merciful Hands than ours.”

Gillian’s hand went out to meet his.

“Oh, Dan, I’m so glad!” she said simply.

He kept her hand in his a moment, then released it gently.

“Well, you can tell her now,” he said awkwardly.

“I?” Gillian smiled a little.  “No.  I want you to tell her.  Don’t you see, Dan”—­as she sensed his impulse to refuse—­“it will make all the difference in Magda if you and she are—­are square with each other?  She’s overweighted.  She’s been carrying a bigger burden than she can bear.  Michael comes first, of course, but there’s been her treatment of you, as well.  June, too.  And—­and other things.  And it’s crushing her. . . .  No, you must tell her.”

“I will—­if you say I must.  But she won’t forgive me easily.”

“I think she will.  I think she’ll understand just what made you do it.  So now we’ll go back to Friars’ Holm together.”

An hour later Storran came slowly downstairs from the little room where he and Magda had met again for the first time since that moonlight night at Stockleigh—­met, not as lovers, but as a man and woman who have each sinned and each learned, out of their sinning, how to pardon and forgive.

Storran was very quiet and grave when presently he found himself alone with Gillian.

“We men will never understand women,” he said.  “There’s an angel hidden away somewhere in every one of you.”  His mouth curved into a smile, half-sad, half-whimsical.  “I’ve just found Magda’s.”

Lady Arabella and Gillian, both feeling rather like conspirators, waited anxiously for a reply to the former’s letter to Quarrington.  But none came.  The time slipped by until a fortnight had elapsed, and with the passage of each day their hearts sank lower.

Neither of them believed that Michael would have utterly disregarded the letter, had he received it, but they feared that it might have miscarried, or that he might be travelling and so not receive it in time to prevent Magda’s carrying out her avowed intention of becoming a working member of the sisterhood.

Even though she knew now that at least June Storran’s death need no longer be added to her account, she still adhered to her decision.  As she had told Dan with a weary simplicity:  “I’m glad.  But it won’t make any difference—­to Michael and me.  Too much water has run under the bridge.  Love that is dead doesn’t come to life again.”

Each day was hardening her resolve, and both Lady Arabella and Gillian—­those two whose unselfish happiness was bound up in her own—­were beginning to realise that it would be a race against time if she was to be saved from taking a step that would divide her from Michael as long as they both should live.

At the end of a fortnight Gillian, driven to desperation, despatched a telegram to his Paris address:  “Did you receive communication from Lady Arabella?” But it shared the fate of the letter, failing to elicit any reply.  She allowed sufficient time to elapse to cover any ordinary delay in transit, then, unknown to Magda, taxied down to the house in Park Lane.