“Magda insists we return to London on Wednesday.  She has completed preliminary arrangements to join sisterhood and goes there Thursday.  Impossible to dissuade her.—­ARABELLA WINTER.”

Gillian’s mouth set itself in a straight line of determination as her eyes raced along the score or so of pregnant words.  She was silent a moment.  Then she met Storran’s questioning glance.

“We can just do it,” she said sternly.  “To-day is Wednesday.  By crossing to Southampton to-night, we can make London to-morrow.”

Without waiting for his reply she entered the inn and ran quickly up the stairs which the landlady had already ascended.

“But, madame, I am not sure that monsieur will receive anyone,” protested the astonished woman, turning round as Gillian caught up with her.

“I must see him,” asserted Gillian quietly.

Perhaps something in the tense young face touched a sympathetic chord in the Frenchwoman’s honest heart.  She scented romance, and when she emerged from the invalid’s bedroom her face was wreathed in smiles.

“It is all arranged.  Will madame please to enter?”

A moment later Gillian found herself standing in front of a tall, gaunt figure of a man, whose coat hung loosely from his shoulders and whose face was worn and haggard with something more than la grippe alone.

“Oh, Michael!”

A little, stricken cry broke from her lips.  What men and women make each other suffer!  She realised it as she met the stark, bitter misery of the grey eyes that burned at her out of the thin face and remembered the look on Magda’s own face when she had last seen her.

She went straight to the point without a word of greeting or of explanation.  There was no time for explanations, except the only one that mattered.

“Michael, why didn’t you answer Lady Arabella’s letter?”

He stared at her.  Then he passed his hand wearily across his forehead.

“Letter?  I don’t remember any letter.”

“She wrote to you about a month ago.  I know the letter was forwarded on to Rome.  It must have followed you here.”

“A month ago?” he repeated.

Then a light broke over his face.  He turned and crossed the room to where a small pile of letters lay on a table, dusty and forgotten.

“Perhaps it’s here,” he said.  “I was taken ill directly I arrived.  I never even sent this address to the concierge at Paris.  I believe I was off my head part of the time—­’flue plays the deuce with you.  But I remember now.  The nurse told me there were some letters which had come while I was ill.  I—­didn’t bother about them.”

While he spoke he was turning over the envelopes, one by one, in a desultory fashion.

“Yes.  This is Lady Arabella’s writing.”  He paused and looked across at Gillian.

“Will you read it, please?” she said.  “And—­oh, you ought to sit down!  You don’t look very strong yet.”