‘Without a deviation that I know of.’

‘From Tourdestelle?’

‘You have not forgotten Tourdestelle, Nevil?’

The memory of it quickened his rapture in reading her features.  It was his first love, his enchantress, who was here:  and how?  Conjectures shot through him like lightnings in the dark.

Irrationally, at a moment when reason stood in awe, he fancied it must be that her husband was dead.  He forced himself to think it, and could have smiled at the hurry of her coming, one, without even a maid:  and deeper down in him the devouring question burned which dreaded the answer.

But of old, in Normandy, she had pledged herself to join him with no delay when free, if ever free!

So now she was free.

One side of him glowed in illumination; the other was black as Winter night; but light subdues darkness; and in a situation like Beauchamp’s, the blood is livelier than the prophetic mind.

‘Why did you tell me to marry?  What did that mean?’ said he.  ’Did you wish me to be the one in chains?  And you have come quite alone!—­you will give me an account of everything presently:—­You are here! in England! and what a welcome for you!  You are cold.’

‘I am warmly clad,’ said Renee, suffering her hand to be drawn to his breast at her arm’s-length, not bending with it.

Alive to his own indirectness, he was conscious at once of the slight sign of reservation, and said:  ‘Tell me . . .’ and swerved sheer away from his question:  ‘how is Madame d’Auffray?’

‘Agnes?  I left her at Tourdestelle,’ said Renee.

‘And Roland?  He never writes to me.’

’Neither he nor I write much.  He is at the military camp of instruction in the North.’

‘He will run over to us.’

‘Do not expect it.’

‘Why not?’

Renee sighed.  ‘We shall have to live longer than I look for . . .’ she stopped.  ’Why do you ask me why not?  He is fond of us both, and sorry for us; but have you forgotten Roland that morning on the Adriatic?’

Beauchamp pressed her hand.  The stroke of Then and Now rang in his breast like a bell instead of a bounding heart.  Something had stunned his heart.  He had no clear central feeling; he tried to gather it from her touch, from his joy in beholding her and sitting with her alone, from the grace of her figure, the wild sweetness of her eyes, and the beloved foreign lips bewitching him with their exquisite French and perfection of speech.

His nature was too prompt in responding to such a call on it for resolute warmth.

‘If I had been firmer then, or you one year older!’ he said.

‘That girl in Venice had no courage,’ said Renee.

She raised her head and looked about the room.

Her instinct of love sounded her lover through, and felt the deficiency or the contrariety in him, as surely as musical ears are pained by a discord that they require no touchstone to detect.  Passion has the sensitiveness of fever, and is as cruelly chilled by a tepid air.