Still he stood gazing at her.

‘You look very beautiful to-day.’

’I know.  I saw it for myself before I left home.  But we won’t talk about that.  When do you go?’

’My goods will be warehoused to-morrow, and the next day I go to Liverpool.’

’I’m glad it’s so soon.  We shan’t need to see each other again.  Smoke your pipe.  I’m going to make a cup of tea.’

‘Kiss me first.  You forgot when you came in.’

’You get no kiss by ordering it.  Beg for it prettily, and we’ll see.’

‘What does it all mean, Nancy?  How can you have altered like this?’

‘You prefer me as I was last time?’

’Not I, indeed.  You make me feel that it will be very hard to leave you.  I shall carry away a picture of you quite different from the dreary face that I had got to be afraid of.’

Nancy laughed, and of a sudden held out her hands to him.

’Haven’t I thought of that?  These were the very words I hoped to hear from you.  Now beg for a kiss, and you shall have one.’

Never, perhaps, had they spent together so harmonious an evening.  Nancy’s tenderness took at length a graver turn, but she remained herself, face and speech untroubled by morbid influence.

‘I won’t see you again,’ she said, ’because I mightn’t be able to behave as I can to-day.  To-day I am myself; for a long time I have been living I don’t know how.’

Tarrant murmured something about her state of health.

’Yes, I know all about that.  A strange thought came to me last night.  When my father was alive I fretted because I couldn’t be independent; I wanted to be quite free, to live as I chose; I looked forward to it as the one thing desirable.  Now, I look back on that as a time of liberty.  I am in bondage, now—­threefold bondage.’

‘How threefold?’

’To you, because I love you, and couldn’t cease loving you, however I tried.  Then, to my father’s will, which makes me live in hiding, as if I were a criminal.  And then—­’

‘What other tyranny?’

’You mustn’t expect all my love.  Before long some one else will rule over me.—­What an exchange I have made!  And I was going to be so independent.’

To the listener, her speech seemed to come from a maturer mind than she had hitherto revealed.  But he suffered from the thought that this might be merely a pathological phase.  In reminding him of her motherhood, she checked the flow of his emotion.

‘You’ll remember,’ Nancy went on, ’that I’m not enjoying myself whilst you are away.  I don’t want you to be unhappy—­only to think of me, and keep in mind what I’m going through.  If you do that, you won’t be away from me longer than you can help.’

It was said with unforced pathos, and Tarrant’s better part made generous reply.

’If you find it too hard, dear, write to me, and tell me, and there shall be an end of it.’