Roland lifted his fine head from his paws, and, holding it erect on a stiff, strong neck, stared at her in obvious inquiry.  She put out her hand and tenderly patted him.

“He will have none of me,” she said.  “He will have none of me.”  And she faintly smiled, but the next instant shook her head a little haughtily, and, having done so, looked down with an altered expression upon the cloth of her skirt, because she had shaken upon it, from the extravagant lashes, two clear drops.

It was not the result of chance that she had seen nothing of him for weeks.  She had not attempted to persuade herself of that.  Twice he had declined an invitation to Stornham, and once he had ridden past her on the road when he might have stopped to exchange greetings, or have ridden on by her side.  He did not mean to seem to desire, ever so lightly, to be counted as in the lists.  Whether he was drawn by any liking for her or not, it was plain he had determined on this.

If she were to go away now, they would never meet again.  Their ways in this world would part forever.  She would not know how long it took to break him utterly—­if such a man could be broken.  If no magic change took place in his fortunes—­and what change could come?—­the decay about him would spread day by day.  Stone walls last a long time, so the house would stand while every beauty and stateliness within it fell into ruin.  Gardens would become wildernesses, terraces and fountains crumble and be overgrown, walls that were to-day leaning would fall with time.  The years would pass, and his youth with them; he would gradually change into an old man while he watched the things he loved with passion die slowly and hard.  How strange it was that lives should touch and pass on the ocean of Time, and nothing should result—­nothing at all!  When she went on her way, it would be as if a ship loaded with every aid of food and treasure had passed a boat in which a strong man tossed, starving to death, and had not even run up a flag.

“But one cannot run up a flag,” she said, stroking Roland.  “One cannot.  There we stand.”

To her recognition of this deadlock of Fate, there had been adding the growing disturbance caused by yet another thing which was increasingly troubling, increasingly difficult to face.

Gradually, and at first with wonderful naturalness of bearing, Nigel Anstruthers had managed to create for himself a singular place in her everyday life.  It had begun with a certain personalness in his attitude, a personalness which was a thing to dislike, but almost impossible openly to resent.  Certainly, as a self-invited guest in his house, she could scarcely protest against the amiability of his demeanour and his exterior courtesy and attentiveness of manner in his conduct towards her.  She had tried to sweep away the objectionable quality in his bearing, by frankness, by indifference, by entire lack of response, but she had remained conscious of its increasing as