Tetherstones

by Ethel M. Dell

PART IV

CHAPTER I
THE LAND OF EXILE

London and a cold grey pall of fog! Frances looked forth from the carriage-window and suppressed a shiver. The grim ugliness of the great buildings that bordered the line seemed to lay a clammy hand upon her. The sordid poverty of the streets was as a knell sounding in her heart. Somehow it seemed to her that there was a greater loneliness here than could be found in any solitude of the moors. It was like a gaunt spectre, menacing her.

The autumn day was fading into twilight, and a dreary drizzle had begun to descend from the smoke-laden sky. She saw the gleam of it on the platforms as the train ran into the teeming terminus. And the spectre at her elbow drew closer. This was the land of exile.

She shook herself free, summoning to her aid that practical spirit which had stood her in such good stead in the old days of her slavery. Was she weaker now than she had been then, she asked herself? But she did not stay to answer the question, for something within her uttered swift warning. She knew that there were weak joints in her armour of which she had never been aware before.

In any case it was not the moment to examine them. The long journey was over, and she had reached her destination. The time for action had arrived. She had made her plans, and it now remained for her to carry them out. With the money that Rotherby had sent for her sketches, she had enough to provide for that night at a hotel, and in the morning she was determined to find a cheap lodging where she could remain pending the settlement of the business that had brought her thither. Beyond that, her plans were vague, but if the matter went favourably she hoped to leave London again immediately. To live somewhere in the country—anywhere in the country—where she could breathe pure air and work; this was all she asked of Fate now. The reek of the town nauseated her; it filled her with an intolerable sense of imprisonment. She had an almost unbearable longing to turn and go back whence she had come. And then suddenly a voice spoke at her side, greeting her, and she looked round with a start.

“Didn’t you expect me?” said Rotherby.

He smiled his welcome in the glare and noise of the great station, and two utterly antagonistic sensations possessed Frances at the sight of him, a feeling of dread and a feeling that was almost gladness. Little as she had desired to see him, the unexpected appearance of a familiar face in all that host of strangers sent a quick thrill of relief through her. The spectre that haunted her drew a little away.

She smiled back at him, and after a moment gave him her hand. “I never expected you. What made you come?”

He laughed with a hint of exultation. His hand-clasp was close and possessive. She drew her own away with a sudden, stabbing memory of that which had been denied her that morning.

“You said you were coming,” he said.

“Yes, but I never said the train.”

He laughed again. “There was no need. Come along! Any luggage? I’ve got a car waiting.”

“My things are all here,” she said. “But I am not going any further to-night. I am going to get a room at the station hotel. To-morrow I can find something cheaper.”

“Splendid!” he said lightly. “I’ll come and see you safely installed, may I?”

She could not refuse, but she made her acceptance of his escort as business-like as possible. Not for worlds would she have had him know that any company just then was preferable to that of the spectre of her desolation that stalked so close behind.

They went into the hotel, and she booked a room for the night, Rotherby standing by her side, amused, not, it seemed, greatly interested, until the business was accomplished.

Then, as she turned, he became at once alert and ready. She thought the cynical lines were more deeply marked than ever about his mouth and eyes, but his smile was wholly friendly.

“Look here!” he said. “You must dine with me and we’ll do a theatre to-night. You’re looking like the maiden all forlorn, though I’m relieved to see you’ve left the cow behind! I’ll be round about seven. Will that do?”

She hesitated. “Do you know I think I would rather have a quiet talk with you somewhere?” she said, with something of an effort. “I want to hear all there is to hear—about my work.”

“Oh, there’s plenty of time,” he said. “As a matter of fact, the dealer chap isn’t in town at the moment. I heard on the ’phone this morning. He’ll soon be back though, so you needn’t be anxious.”

The news chilled her. “I had hoped to see him to-morrow,” she said.

“He’ll soon be back,” said Rotherby again, with careless confidence. “Now what about this theatre? You’ll come? It’ll pass the time away.”

It was in her mind to refuse. She would have preferred to refuse. But in the end she accepted. Perhaps it was the dread of a long evening of solitary speculation and its attendant misgivings that actuated her. Perhaps his insistence weighed with her; or perhaps like a child she was overwhelmed by the sheer loneliness of her position. Whatever the motive, she yielded, and having yielded, she thrust all regrets away. It was as though after her long journey she had entered another world, and she determined almost fiercely to take the advice that had been offered her that morning and fling all handicaps aside. He had said it was no good. He had told her not to return. Then she would go forward on this new path and stifle the pain at her heart. It might be that in time she would forget. O God, if she could but forget!

She parted from Rotherby in the vestibule of the hotel and went up to her room. They were to meet again in little more than an hour, and she spent the time in a feverish effort to banish thought and to banish also that appearance of forlornness of which he had jestingly spoken.

She was very tired, but she would not own it, and when she met him again she had captured that reserve of strength which dwells at the back of jaded nerves, and an almost reckless charm was hers.

He gave her flowers, carnations and lilies, and she pinned them at her breast, revelling in their sweetness, exotic though she knew them to be. He took her to a restaurant, and the feeling of unreality followed her thither, throwing a strange glamour over all things. He did not again taunt her with being forlorn; for she held herself like a queen, and not even the simplicity of her attire could make her insignificant.

“Gad!” he said to her once. “How wonderful you are!”

And she uttered a little laugh that surprised herself. “It is all make-believe,” she said.

He did not ask her to explain, but his eyes followed her perpetually with a kindling flame which mounted steadily higher, and when they left the table his hand closed for a moment upon her arm.

She shook it off with a laugh and a shrug. “Every game has its rules,” she said.

He laughed also, answering her mood. “Every woman makes her own,” he said.

They went out into the gleaming streets and entered the waiting car. The unaccustomed luxury was like a dream to Frances. It was no longer an effort to put the past away from her. It had sunk of itself into the far dim distance. Very curiously the only memory that remained active in her mind was that of the purple flower that bloomed upon the coping of the cloisters in the Bishop’s garden. The vision of that was fantastically vivid, as it had been on that day of her first talk with Montague Rotherby.

The pain at her heart had wholly ceased, and she wondered a little, barely realizing that she had stilled it temporarily with this anæsthetic of unreality. But a sub-conscious dread of its return made her steep herself more and more deeply in its oblivion. After all, to whom did it matter except herself? This man with his cynical eyes was too experienced a player to be made a loser in one night. And she had so little left to lose.

She sat in a box with him at the theatre, and though she quickly absorbed herself in the play, she was aware of his undivided attention from the beginning.

It even exasperated her at last, so that she turned to him after the first act with a movement of impatience. “Does it interest you so little,” she said, “that you can’t even be bothered to glance at the stage?”

“I have seen it already three times,” he made answer, “and I am more interested at the present moment in watching the effect it has upon you.”

She uttered a laugh, but the words gave her an odd feeling of shock. The play was a fashionable one, but though it compelled her deepest interest, it held moments of disgust for her as well.

“I should never want to see this more than once,” she said at the end of the second act.

Whereat he laughed. “Your education has been neglected,” he said. “We all think like this now-a-days. The puritanical atmosphere of Tetherstones has spoilt your taste.”

She was silent. Somehow the very word sent a pang to her heart.

He leaned slightly towards her, looking at her. “Tell me about your sojourn at Tetherstones!” he said. “Were the farm people decent to you? Were you happy there?”

There was a slighting note in his voice that she found intolerable. She turned deliberately and met his look.

“You know the Dermots,” she said. “You know quite well that they are not just—farm-people. Why should you conceal the fact?”

He made a careless gesture. “I know that one of them shot me in mistake for a rabbit that night I waited for you,” he said. “I was never more scared in my life. That was the son, I presume? Did he ever mention that episode to you?”

“Never,” she said.

“No? Perhaps he wasn’t very proud of it. Perhaps he realized that the rabbit fallacy wouldn’t carry him very far in a court of law. I fancy he imagined that I was poaching on his preserves.” Rotherby spoke with a sarcastic drawl. “Very unreasonable of him, what?”

She felt the burning colour rise in her face under his eyes, and she averted her own. “Not being in his confidence, I really can hardly give an opinion,” she said.

“Oh, you’re not in his confidence?” said Rotherby. “Somehow I didn’t think you were, or you would hardly be so ready to take up the cudgels in his defence. He’s a curious fellow. I knew him years ago. He had brains as a young man, then somehow he got touched in the upper story and got condemned to the simple life. That was how he came to take up farming. An awful blow to the old man, I believe! I heard he was never the same again afterwards. That is about as far as my information takes me. I must admit that from a personal point of view I am not vastly interested in the family. Did you find them interesting?”

“They were kinder to me than I can possibly say,” Frances said.

The careless information he had given her was like an obnoxious draught that she had been compelled to swallow. But somehow, in spite of herself, she had assimilated it. It explained so much which before had been inexplicable. She remembered how she had more than once asked herself if the lonely gladiator on that Devon moor were always wholly responsible for his actions. And was this why he had told her only that morning that it was no good—no good—that her love was nought but a handicap to be overcome and cast aside?

Again she was conscious of the pain she had stifled waking within her. Again she felt the chill presence of the haunting spectre. Then Rotherby’s voice came to her again, and she turned almost with relief.

“They were decent to you, were they?” he said. “I presume that was why you went back to them from Fordestown?”

She thrust her pain away out of sight of his mocking eyes. “No,” she said quietly. “I went back to be with the little girl before she died. She wanted me.”

He gave a slight start. “What? The blind child that used to run about the lane? Is she dead? What from?”

“She was very fragile,” Frances said, and instinctively she spoke with reverence. “She had a fall which caused an abscess at the base of the brain, affecting the spine. The doctor had always known it might happen at any time. She didn’t suffer—dear little soul.”

“A tragic family!” commented Rotherby, and dropped into silence.

He leaned back in his chair with his face in shadow, and for a space she felt that his attention was no longer focussed upon her.

It gave her a certain sense of relief, for her thoughts would turn back to those few cynical words of his and she needed time to recover from the shock of them. Was it true? Was it true? Was this the key to the riddle that had so often baffled her? Was it for this that she had seen him writhing in agony of soul?

The curtain went up, and she jerked herself back to her surroundings. She tried to immerse herself anew in the play, but her interest was gone. The glamour had faded, and she knew that she was terribly, overwhelmingly tired. A desire for solitude came upon her and with it, inseparable from it, an intolerable sense of exile, a longing that was almost anguish for the peace of the open moors, for the scent of the bog-myrtle, and the rain. . . . She closed her eyes, and drew her memories about her like a mantle. . . .

CHAPTER II
THE NIGHTMARE

Someone was speaking to her. A hand touched her. She looked up with a start.

Rotherby was leaning over her. His eyes met hers closely, lingeringly, with a caress in them which her tiredness barely comprehended.

“How tired you are!” he said. “Shall I take you home?”

Home! For a few moments her weary brain clung piteously about the word. Then the pressure of his hand brought swift awakening. She sat up with a jerk.

“Oh, is it over? Yes, I am very tired. Forgive me! Let us go!”

His hand still held her. He slipped it under her elbow, helping her to rise.

She got up quickly, and freed herself. He put her cloak about her in silence. They passed out of the box into the crowd that filled the corridor.

“It’s pouring with rain,” said Rotherby, as they emerged into the vestibule. “Wait while I get the car!”

He left her, and she took her stand at a corner of the steps, idly watching the press of people that thronged past her on to the pavement. Her sleep had left her slightly dazed, physically cold. The thought of the dear Devon she had left only that morning had sunk very far below the surface of her consciousness. It was as if years as well as distance separated her from it, and all she knew now was the ache of weariness and a certain dull disgust with everything about her. A man on the pavement below her, wearing an ulster with a cap drawn down over his eyes, evidently waiting for a conveyance, caught her passing attention because the set of his shoulders was somewhat reminiscent to her of the lonely horseman who had awaited her coming on the moor, but she was too apathetic to bestow more than a cursory glance upon any, and she shrank at the moment with something like panic from all things that might pain her. She was too tired to endure any more that night.

Out of the press of hurrying people Rotherby detached himself and came to her. “It’s all right. Take my arm! The car is just here.”

She obeyed him, for the throng was great, and her only desire to escape the vortex of humanity and find the rest she so sorely needed. He piloted her through the crowd. For a few seconds she felt the rain beating upon her uncovered head, and then she was sunk upon the cushions in the darkness of the car with Rotherby beside her, and the glittering streets slipping past with kaleidoscopic rapidity.

The slashing of the rain upon the window-panes penetrated her consciousness. “What a wet night!” she murmured.

“Yes, fiendish,” said Rotherby. “But I’ll soon have you out of it. You’re dead beat, aren’t you?”

“Very, very tired,” she answered, and dropped back into silence.

The car slid on through the night. They turned out of the glaring streets, and in the dimness Frances closed her eyes again. She did not want to talk; and Rotherby’s mood seemed to coincide with hers, for he sat in utter silence by her side.

She was hardly aware that the car had stopped when suddenly he spoke. “You’ll come in here for a few minutes? I’ll tell the man to wait.”

She roused herself. “In where?”

He was opening the door. “It’s a half-way house where you can get some supper. I have ordered it specially for you.”

“Supper!” She echoed the word, slightly startled. “Oh, really I don’t want any. I would rather go straight back.”

He was already out of the car. He stood in the doorway, laughing. “Please don’t keep me here in the rain to argue! Let’s do it inside! I can’t let you go supperless to bed. It’s against my principles.”

He took her hand with the words, and his own had an imperative touch to which she yielded almost before she realized it.

“I really don’t want anything,” she protested, but she was getting out of the car as she spoke. “I never thought of such a thing.”

“Nonsense!” said Rotherby. “Then it’s a good thing I’m here to think for you. I’ve got something rather interesting to tell you too. I’ve been saving it up all the evening. Confound this rain! Let’s get into shelter!”

He spoke a word to the man, and then took her arm and led her swiftly up some steps to a lighted portico. They were actually inside before Frances found her breath to speak again. “What is this place?”

“It’s a hotel of sorts,” he answered lightly. “I hope it meets with your approval. It’s somewhat after the French style. Come up in the lift!”

She went with him, still possessed by that feeling of unreality which had held her tired senses in thrall throughout the evening. The flowers at her breast were crushed and faded, but the scent of them had all the sweetness of a dream. Certain words floated through her memory—had she heard them only that morning? “People like you and me can’t afford to waste any time over—dreams.” Ah well, the night would soon be gone, and she would wake in the morning to the old grim struggle. But till then—like the memory of the purple flower upon the wall in the days of her slavery—she would hold to her dream.

She passed out of the lift with Rotherby, and he unlocked a door that led into a tiny hall.

“Take off your cloak!” he said; then, as she fumbled, unfastened it himself and slipped it from her shoulders.

She felt his eyes upon her again, and was stabbed, as a dreamer is sometimes stabbed, by a curious feeling of insecurity. Then he had turned away, and was taking off his own hat and coat.

He closed the door by which they had entered and she heard the snap of a patent lock. “We don’t want anyone else in,” he said.

She paused. “But isn’t it public? I thought you said it was a hotel.”

He opened another door, and switched on a light that showed her a luxurious red-curtained apartment, with a polished table spread with refreshments of all kinds, and an electric stove that burned with a hot glow before a deep settee.

“This isn’t public,” he said. “It belongs to me.”

“Belongs to you!” She looked at him with eyes that were beginning to see that which her numbed brain till then had failed to grasp. “What do you mean?”

He made an airy gesture. “I mean that I have paid for it, that’s all. See what a disappointment you would have given me if you had refused to come in to supper!”

She stood staring at him. “I—don’t understand. You said—you did say—it was a public place?”

He smiled his scoffing smile. “Did I? I don’t seem to remember it. It doesn’t matter, does it? Sit down and have something! I prepared this as a little surprise, my Circe. You’re not vexed?”

“Vexed!” she said, and paused, considering. “But—it’s so extraordinary. I never dreamed——”

“No?” he said. “Well, you’ve been dreaming hard enough all the evening anyway. Come, sit down! Sit down and let’s enjoy ourselves! There’s no law against that, is there? Let’s see if I can open this champagne!”

He proceeded to open it, and she watched him pour it foaming into two glasses on the table. The feeling that she had in some fashion been tricked was gaining ground with her, and yet in his careless demeanour she could detect no reason for alarm. He so evidently regarded the whole affair as a joke.

He turned round to her suddenly. “I say, don’t look so shocked! There really is no need. You can always marry me afterwards, you know, if you feel so disposed. In fact, I think you are practically committed to that, so let’s make the best of it!”

“What do you mean?” she said.

He lifted his brows cynically. “That’s what I have brought you here to explain. But never mind that now! Drink some of this stuff! You’ll find it quite good.”

He motioned her to the table, but she held back. If she had dreamed all the evening, she was awake now, most suddenly and terribly awake. Her brain felt strangely clear, as if it had been focussed upon one thing only till it had crystallized to an amazing penetration. The vision upon which she had gazed uncomprehendingly for so long had resolved itself into a thing of horror which filled the whole of her consciousness.

She saw herself helpless as a prisoner chained to a rock, but superbly she gathered her strength to meet the situation. She faced him like a queen.

“You have made a mistake,” she said. “Let me go!”

He straightened himself sharply. She saw an ugly look cross his face—the look of a man who is debating at which point to drive his weapon home. Then again, carelessly, he laughed.

“Do let’s have supper first!” he said. “We can talk afterwards for any length of time. I am sure you will find that sound advice. A good meal is always a help.”

She stood motionless, her eyes unwaveringly upon him. “Let me go!” she said again.

He came to her then, and though the smile was still upon his face, she knew that, like herself, he was braced for battle.

“Why this tragic attitude?” he said. “And to what end? Don’t spoil the occasion, my Circe! We are going to enjoy ourselves to-night.”

She flung down the gauntlet with a supreme disregard of consequences. “You hound!” she said.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I like you for that. Yes, I am a hound, but I don’t appreciate an easy prey. I’ll conquer you now I’ve got you. But I’m in no hurry. Sit down and let’s talk it over!”

Somehow that weakened her more than any violence. His utter assurance, his easy acceptance of her contempt, his almost philosophical attitude in the matter, all made her realize the hopelessness of her position. He had deliberately trapped her, and he was not ashamed that she should know it. She stood before him speechless.

“That’s better,” he said. “You’re getting a grasp of the situation, bringing that business-like mind of yours to bear upon it. Now listen to me! I love you. I can’t tell you why, but I do. I’ve always wanted you, and I made up my mind a long while ago that I would have you. We began well, and then you broke away. But you won’t break away this time. You belong to me, and I am going to enforce my claim. Is that quite clear?”

“You have no claim,” she said through white lips.

“That is merely your point of view,” he rejoined, “and I do not share it. You gave yourself to me, remember, and I never gave you any cause to regret your action. If you had behaved reasonably, we should have been married by this time, and all your troubles would have been at an end. As it is,—” He paused.

“Well?” she said.

She saw his face harden. “As it is,” he said, “you have tried my patience to the utmost limit, till I have come to the pitch when I will stand no more trifling. Do you understand? To-night I am your master. To-night—for the last time—I ask you, will you marry me? Think well before you decide! To-morrow—possibly—you may be not only willing, but anxious, but,” he shrugged his shoulders again—“I may have other plans by that time.”

“Ah!” she said, and put a hand to her head.

The floor had begun to sway under her feet. His face, with its cruel, set smile, had receded into distance. She was cold from head to foot, with an icy coldness, and she thought her heart had ceased to beat. She felt herself totter.

And then there came the grasp of his hand, holding her back as it seemed on the very edge of the abyss. And instinctively she clung to the support he offered, with gasping incoherent entreaty.

“Oh, hold me up! Save me! Don’t let me fall!”

“Sit down!” he said. “Here is a chair! Now drink! It’s all right. You’ll be better in a minute.”

She felt the rim of a glass against her chattering teeth, and she drank with her head against his arm.

The wine was like fire in her veins; the awful numbness passed.

“Better?” said Rotherby. “Come, this is rather a terrible fuss to make, isn’t it? Drink a little more!”

She drank again, and then, as he released her, bent forward over the table, hiding her face. A great shiver went through her and passed. She sat bowed and silent.

After a few seconds he spoke again, his tone quite friendly, but with that hint of mastery which made her realize how completely she was at his mercy.

“Sit up and have some supper! You will feel much better for it. Afterwards we will sit by the fire and talk.”

She raised herself slowly, propping her chin on her hands. She spoke, haltingly, with difficulty, almost as if it were in a foreign language.

“If I give my promise—to—to—to—marry—you, will you—let me—go?”

“To-night?” he said.

“Yes, to-night.” She did not look at him; she was staring before her at a picture on the opposite wall—a picture of heather-clad moors and running streams—but with eyes that saw not.

There was a brief pause, then very suddenly the man behind her moved. He bent and took her head between his hands, compelling her to face him.

“Why should I do that?” he said.

She met his look, though an irrepressible shudder went through her at his touch. “Because,” she said, in the same slow, uncertain way, “you are a man—and I—am a woman. I am at your mercy—now, but I shall not always be. If you want to—to—hold me by any means—except force—then—you will be merciful. No! Listen! I am at your mercy. I know it. I own it. But—you are not all beast. If you will let me go, I will promise to marry you—as soon as you wish. If you will not let me go, you will have your way to-night. But after to-night—after to-night——”

“Well?” he said, awed in spite of himself by her voice, her words, her look, yet half-mocking still. “After to-night?”

“After to-night,” she said, and drew herself from his hold, facing him with a gesture of freedom that was even regal, “you will never see me again, because I swear to you—before God—that I shall be dead.”

He blenched a little, but in a moment recovered himself. “Pshaw! Words are easy—especially with women. That threat doesn’t move me.”

“No.” She got up from her chair with a strange calmness. “It may not—yet. But it will—it will. If you were all beast, you might not care. But you are a man at heart, and so you will never forget it. And you will care—terribly—afterwards.”

She turned from him with the words, walked to the settee before the stove, and sat down, holding her hands to the warmth, ignoring his presence utterly.

He did not follow her. There was that about her that made it impossible just then. He had not thought that she had the strength so to dominate the situation. It had been completely in his own hands, but somehow it had passed out of his control. Wherefore? The sight of her weakness had made the conquest seem so easy that he had almost despised her for it. And now?

He turned sullenly from her, took up a glass and drank.

After many seconds he spoke. “The last time I saw you, you gave me to understand that it was only your pride that kept you from marrying me. That is not the reason you want to back out now.”

“I gave you my reason then,” she made answer, without turning. “I did not love you.”

“You loved me once,” he rejoined, “before you threw me over.”

She uttered a short, hard sigh. “I hadn’t even begun to know the meaning of the word.”

He flung round savagely. “There’s someone else in the field. I suspected it before. Who is it? That maniac at Tetherstones?”

She leaned forward a little further to the glow. “It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “Even if it were so, it wouldn’t really count, would it?”

“It would not,” he rejoined curtly.

“So why discuss it?” said Frances.

Her weariness sounded again in her voice, but there was no weakness with it, rather a species of solitary majesty upon which he could not intrude. Yet, baffled, he still sought to penetrate her defences.

“You loved me once,” he repeated doggedly. “What did I ever do to forfeit your love?”

She turned suddenly as she sat, and faced him, pale, with burning eyes of accusation.

“I will tell you what you did. You desecrated my love. You killed it at birth. You treated me then—as you are treating me now—dishonourably. You gave me stones for bread, and you are doing it still. I think you are incapable of anything else. Love—real love—is out of your reach!”

The fire of her words scorched him; he drew back. “Gad!” he said. “If you’d lived in the old days, you’d have been burnt as a witch.”

“There are worse fates than that,” she answered very bitterly.

“There are!” he returned with a flash of anger. “And hotter hells! Well, you’ve made your conditions. I accept them. You are free to go.”

He flung the words with a force and suddenness that struck her like a blow. She sat for a few moments, staring at him. Then, with an effort, she rose.

“Do you mean that?”

He came close to her. His face was drawn. Somehow she felt as though she were looking at an animal through the iron bars of a cage.

He spoke, between his teeth. “Yes, I mean it. I will let you go—just to show you that—as you kindly remarked just now—I am not—all—beast. But—I hold you to your promise. Is that understood? You will marry me.”

She lifted her head with a certain pride. “I have said it,” she said, and turned from him.

He thrust out a hand and grasped her shoulder. “You will say it again!” he said.

She stopped. That grip of his sent panic to her heart, but she stilled it with a desperate sense of expediency. Yet, for the moment she could not speak, so terrible was the strain, and in that moment, as she stood summoning her strength, there came the sound of an electric bell cleaving the dreadful silence so suddenly that she cried out and almost fell.

“Damnation!” Rotherby said. “See here! I shall have to go to the door. You don’t want to be seen here. You’d better go into the other room.”

He indicated a door at the further end of the one in which they stood, and she turned towards it instinctively.

He went with her, and opened it, switching on a light. She glanced within, and drew back.

“Go in!” he urged. “I can’t help it. It’s only for a few seconds. I won’t let anyone in. Quick! It’s the only way.”

She turned to him like a hunted creature, wildly beseeching quarter. “You will let me go afterwards? You promise it? You swear it?”

“Of course I will let you go,” he said. “There goes that damn’ bell again. You’ll be all right here, and I won’t keep you long.”

He almost pushed her into the room, and shut the door upon her. The bell was pealing imperatively. She sank into a chair at the foot of the bed, and wondered if this nightmare would ever pass.

CHAPTER III
THE AWAKENING

The door was shut, but there came to her the sound of voices in the distance, and she listened intently, holding her breath. At any moment he might return, at any moment the dread struggle might be resumed. He had given her his word, but she did not trust him. She never had trusted him; and the memory of his grip upon her shoulder gave her small cause for confidence now. She glanced around her for a possible means of escape, but the only other door in the room led into the little hall in which even now Rotherby was parleying with his unwelcome visitor. The impulse came to her to brave all risk of observation and walk straight out while he was thus occupied, but a more wary instinct bade her pause. If the visitor were an old friend, he might enter uninvited, and if that happened the outer door would be left unguarded, and she could make her escape unobserved, before Rotherby could get rid of him. This would be far the easier course, and would offer fewer difficulties later. So, with stretched nerves, prepared for immediate flight, she waited.

The opportunity came even sooner than she expected. Very suddenly she heard the tramp of feet in the room she had just quitted, and in a second she was on her feet.

But in that second she heard a voice raised abruptly like the blare of an angry bull, and she stood rooted to the spot, listening, listening, listening, with her hands clasped tight upon her heart.

Words reached her through the tumult of sound, words and the sounds of a fierce struggle.

“Damn you, I’ll have an answer! I’ll kill you if you don’t speak. What? You infernal skunk, do you think I’d stick at killing you? There’s nothing I’d enjoy more.”

There followed a dreadful series of sounds as of something being banged against the wall by which she stood, and then suddenly there came a terrific blow against the door itself. A cry followed the blow—a gurgling terrible cry, and it did for Frances what nothing else could have done; it gave her strength to act.

She could have made her escape in that moment, but the bare thought was gone from her mind. She sprang to the door, and threw it open. Then she saw that which she had already beheld that evening, but with unseeing eyes—the big man in the ulster who had waited just below her in the rain at the theatre steps half-an-hour before.

He was holding Rotherby between his hands as he might have held a sack of meal, and banging his head against everything hard in the vicinity. Rotherby was struggling with gasping, broken oaths for freedom, but he was utterly outmatched. As Frances flung open the door he fell backwards at her feet, and the man who gripped him proceeded furiously to stand over him and bang his head upon the floor.

“Oh, stop!” Frances cried in horror. “Oh, for God’s sake, stop!”

He stopped. Her voice seemed to have an almost miraculous effect upon him. He stopped. But he knelt upon Rotherby, holding him down, and his face, suffused with passion, was to her the most appalling sight she had ever beheld.

There followed an awful silence, during which he remained quite motionless, bent over his enemy. Rotherby was bleeding profusely at the nose, but he was half-stunned and seemed unaware of it. His arms were flung wide, and his hands opened and shut convulsively, in a manner that made the onlooker shudder.

How long that fearful silence lasted she never knew. It seemed to stretch out interminably into minutes so weighted with dread that each was like an hour.

At last, when she could endure no longer, huskily, with tremendous effort, she spoke. “Do you want—to kill him?”

He raised his head slowly and looked at her. His eyes were bloodshot and the veins of his temples visibly throbbing, but the rest of his face was ghastly white.

He looked at her, and she felt a quick, piercing pain at her heart that made her catch her breath.

“I have wanted to kill him for years,” he said. “Do you value his life? If not——”

It was terrible, it was monstrous; but it was real. He was asking her—actually asking her, as a victorious gladiator in the arena—for permission to despatch his victim. And even as he spoke, she saw his right hand move towards the throat of the prostrate man.

She cried out wildly at the sight, in an anguish of horror. “Arthur, no—no—no! That’s murder! Arthur,—stop!”

“He is worse than a murderer,” Arthur said in the same fatalistic tone.

“Ah, no!” she made gasping answer. “And you! And you!”

“And—you!” he said, with terrible emphasis.

She broke in upon him desperately, for the need was great. “He has done me no harm. Let him go! You must—you must let him go.”

“Why?” he said.

“Because I ask you—I beg you—because—because—” She halted, frantically searching for adequate words. “Oh, wait!” she besought him. “Wait!”

His eyes regarded her immovably. “For your sake?” he said at last.

She wrung her hands together. “Yes—yes!”

He got slowly to his feet. “For your sake then!” he said. “Now tell me—what you are doing here? And why did you cry out just now when I rang the bell?”

His manner was absolutely quiet, but there was that in his look that warned her that the danger was not past. She did not dare to tell him the truth.

“I cried out,” she said, “because—I was startled. I hid in this room for the same reason.”

“And—you came here—for what?” he said.

She glanced away to the spread table, for she could not meet his eyes. “We had been to the theatre. I came in—for supper.”

“And he has behaved towards you absolutely as a gentleman should?” he questioned, in the same level voice that made her think of a weapon poised for striking.

“Yes—oh, yes!” she answered.

He was silent for a moment or two, and she knew that his look searched her unsparingly. Then: “I don’t believe you are telling me the truth,” he said. “But I shall soon know.”

He turned abruptly to the man on the floor. “Get up!” he said.

Rotherby had drawn his hands over his face. He rolled on to his side as the curt command reached him, and in a few seconds, grabbing at a chair, he dragged himself to his feet. But his face was ashen and he could not stand. He dropped into the chair with a groan.

Frances went to the washing-stand, squeezed out a sponge in cold water and brought it to him. He took it in a dazed fashion and mopped the blood from his nose and mouth.

Arthur stood by, massive and motionless, his face set in iron lines. He was like an executioner, grim as doom, waiting for his victim. He made no comment when Frances brought towel and basin to Rotherby’s side and helped him.

But at length, as Rotherby began to show signs of recovery, he waved her to one side.

“Now, you! Let’s have your version! What are you and Miss Thorold doing here?”

Rotherby looked at him through narrowed lids. His face was very evil as he made reply. “I chance to live here.”

“I know that. And you’ll die here without any chance about it if you don’t choose to give me a straight answer to my questions. What did you bring her here for?”

“What the devil is that to you?” said Rotherby sullenly. “You go to hell!”

Though he was beaten so that he could hardly lift his head, he showed no fear, and for that Frances, who knew something of the temperament of the man who had beaten him, accorded him a certain admiration. To be punished as he had been punished, and yet to refuse submission proved a strength with which she had hardly credited him.

At Arthur’s swift gesture of exasperation, she moved forward, intervening. “Let me speak!” she said. “I will answer your questions.”

She stood between the two men, and again, vesting her with a majesty which was not normally hers, there came to her aid the consciousness of standing for the right. Whatever the outcome, she recognized that the protection of Rotherby must somehow be accomplished. To save the one man from death and the other from committing a murder, she braced herself for the greatest battle of her life.

Arthur’s look came back to her. He regarded her sombrely, as though he recognized in her a factor that must be dealt with.

“You say he brought you here for supper,” he said. “Did he give you no reason for believing that he meant to keep you here all night?”

She faced him steadfastly. The man’s life hung in the balance. It rested with her—it rested with her.

“I was on the point of leaving when you arrived,” she said.

“Is that the truth?” he said.

“It is the truth,” she answered quietly.

“You honestly believe he meant to let you go?”

“Yes.” Her eyes looked straight into his with the words. She realized that the tension was slackening, but she dared not relax her own vigilance. The danger was not yet past. Not yet had she accomplished her end.

“He has never given you any cause to distrust him?” Arthur said.

She hesitated momentarily. “I am trusting him now,” she said finally.

“Why?” He flung the word with a touch of fierceness. “You are saying this to bluff me. It is not true.”

“It is true,” she said resolutely, paused a second, then very firmly made her position secure. “I am trusting him because—because I have promised to be his wife.”

The declaration fell between them like a bombshell. She did not know how she uttered it, and having done so, there came a mist before her eyes which seemed to fog all her senses, making it impossible for her to gauge the result—to realize in any sense the devastation she had wrought. She thought she heard him draw the breath between his teeth as though he repressed some sign of suffering. But she was not sure even of this, so desperate for the moment was her own extremity.

It could not have lasted for long, that wild tumult of emotion, but when it passed she was trembling from head to foot as though she had merged from some frightful conflict. She wanted to protest for very anguish that she could not endure any more, she could not—she could not! But her voice was gone. She stood waiting, wondering how soon her strength would utterly fail.

Arthur’s voice came to her at last, low, hoarse with restraint. “So that is why you came to town!”

She could not answer him. There was no reproach in his tone, but the pain of it was more agonizing to her than any suffering of her own. As in a vision she saw him beaten and thrust aside—the mighty gladiator to whom, for some mysterious reason, victory was eternally denied. Her whole soul cried out against the fate that dogged him, but she stifled the cry. She could not—dared not—give it utterance.

She yet stood between him and his victim, and she must continue to stand. She clung to that thought before all else. To save him from himself—it was all that counted with her just then.

He spoke again at length, and in his voice was a subtle difference that told her the end was within sight—the battle almost won.

“I am beginning to understand,” he said. “I thought—somehow I thought—I had misjudged you—that night at Tetherstones—you remember? Well, I know better now. I shall never make that mistake again. If he marries you, no doubt you will consider yourself lucky. But—just in case you don’t know—I had better warn you that he doesn’t stick at letting a woman down if it suits his purpose.”

His voice grew harder, colder; it had a steely edge. “You may have heard of a sister of mine who died some years ago—Nan? He ruined her deliberately, intentionally. He never meant to make good. She was young. She didn’t know the world as you know it. She—actually loved him. And she paid the penalty. We all paid to a certain extent. That is why—” his tone suddenly deepened,—“I have sworn to kill him if he ever comes my way again—as I would kill a poisonous reptile. Perhaps it seems unreasonable to you. Your ideas are different. But—the fact remains.”

He ceased to speak, and still she stood between them, past speech, almost past feeling, yet steadfast in her resolve. The battle was nearly over—the end within sight.

Again there fell a silence, and she counted the seconds, asking herself how long—how long? Somewhere within her she seemed to hear the echo of the words that he had spoken on that terrible night at Tetherstones. “I loved you—I—loved you!” And now as then she felt that the fires of hell were very near. But she would not faint this time. O God, she must not faint!

He spoke again—for the last time—and there was a sound of dreadful laughter in his voice.

“It seems I have come on a fool’s errand,” he said. “I can only apologize for my intrusion, and withdraw. No doubt you know best how to play your own game. I only regret that I did not realize sooner what it was.”

That was all. He turned from her with the words, and she knew that the awful battle was over. Because of her, he would let his enemy go free.

But as she stood numbly listening to the heavy tread of his feet as he went away, she knew no sense of conquest or even of relief. The battle was over, but she herself was wounded past all hope. And she thought her heart must die within her, so bitter was the pain.

CHAPTER IV
THE VICTORY

He was gone. The clang of the outer door spoke of his departure.

He was gone, and the dread struggle was past.

She came to herself like a dazed mariner flung ashore by the breakers, hardly believing that the peril was over. A great weakness was upon her and she knew that she could not stand against it. Of Rotherby’s very existence at the moment she was unaware. Mechanically, gropingly, she made her way to the settee before the stove and sank down upon it. She was shivering violently.

The warmth came about her, and she stretched out her hands to it, seeking its comfort, thankful for the physical relief of it, yet hardly conscious of her surroundings.

“It is dead—it is dead!” she kept saying to herself over and over. “It is quite—quite dead!”

But for a long time she could not bring herself to realize why she said it or what it was that was dead.

At last by slow and painful degrees it began to dawn upon her that there was a meaning to the words. Something was dead. Something had died by her hand in that very room. What was it?

Now it came to her in all its immensity, crushing her down. She had slain his love. She had killed her own romance. From that night onwards he would never think of her again save with reviling and bitterness of soul. She had taken that which was holy and flung it in the dust. She had desecrated the perfect gift, had made a hideous travesty of that high vision which had been vouchsafed to her. More, she had dragged the man she loved down to the very gates of hell, and had made him know the tortures of the damned.

The warmth was beginning to ease her exhausted body, but her spirit found no comfort. Almost she preferred that numbness of all her faculties. For the misery that was taking its place was more than she could bear.

She still sat with her hands outstretched, but hot tears were rolling down her face, unheeded, unchecked, the tears of a great despair.

“It is dead,” she said to herself over and over in the desolation of her soul. “It is dead. It is dead.”

There came a voice behind her—Rotherby’s voice, and she started slightly, remembering him. It was curious how little he counted now.

“Frances,” he said, and with her outer consciousness she noticed an odd embarrassment in his tone and faintly wondered. “I’ve made a pretty poor show of this. Don’t cry! You’re perfectly safe.”

“Am I crying?” she said, and put a hand to her face.

He came and sat beside her. “Listen!” he said “I’ve been a damned cad. And you’re a topper. I never knew you had it in you—or any woman had for the matter of that. There’s nothing I won’t do for you after this. Understand?”

“I don’t want you to do anything,” she said wearily.

He made an odd sound as of some irony suppressed. “You’re nearly dead,” he said. “So am I. Come and have supper! And trust me—will you trust me?”

Something in his tone reached her. She turned slowly and looked at him. His face was very pale, and his eyes looked drawn and strained; but except for this she saw no traces about him of the recent struggle. He met her gaze with a faint smile.

“I’ve had all the nonsense knocked out of me for to-night,” he said. “But I suppose I’m damned lucky to be here at all. That fellow has the strength of an ox. The back of my head is like a jelly, damn him!”

“I thought he meant to kill you,” she said dully.

“He did,” said Rotherby. “You saved my life.”

“Did I?” Her look fell away from him. “It wasn’t for your sake,” she said, after a moment. “It was for his.”

“I gathered that,” said Rotherby. “That’s what makes you so wonderful.”

“I don’t feel wonderful,” she said.

He leaned towards her. “Don’t cry!” he said again. “You are wonderful. And you’ve made me feel a cur of the very first magnitude. That’s something to accomplish, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking of you.”

“You’re worn out,” he said. “Have some food, and I’ll take you back. You’re going to trust me, aren’t you? I swear I won’t let you down after this. You’re not afraid of me?”

“Oh no, I am not afraid of you,” she said.

In a detached, impersonal fashion, out of the depths of her despair, she wondered how he could imagine that he or his actions had the slightest importance for her. Could anything in the world really matter after this cataclysm? He might have been a total stranger, ministering to her, so small was his significance now.

But she was in a vague fashion grateful for his kindness, and when he brought her food, she forced herself to eat lest he should think her unappreciative. It revived her also, lifting the awful weight of inertia from her senses, so that after a while she was capable of coherent thought again.

“That’s better,” Rotherby said presently. “Look here! You won’t believe me, but I’m most damnably sorry for all this.”

“I do believe you,” she said, with a wan smile.

“Oh, I don’t mean the hammering,” he said. “I’m actually thinking of you for a change. I’ve been a rotter all my life, and I don’t count. But you—you’re straight. I always knew you were. And I’ve found out something more about you to-night. I’ve found out why you turned me down.”

He got up abruptly, and began to walk about the room.

“I half-guessed it long ago. I know it now. You love this hairy-heeled chap who nearly killed me to-night. You needn’t bother to deny it. You love him and he loves you. And yet—and yet—you let him believe—that of you! Good God! There isn’t another woman on earth would have done it.”

“I had to do it,” Frances said with simplicity. “He would have killed you.”

“Yes, he would have killed me—and swung for it. You didn’t want him to swing. Listen!” He came suddenly to her and knelt by her side. “You told me a little while ago that I was not all beast, that I was a man at heart. And you’re right. I am—I am. Frances, I swear to you—I’ll never let you down after this.”

The earnestness of his tone moved her somewhat. She put out a hand to him. “I know,” she said.

He gripped her hand fast. “You don’t know what a brute I am,” he said. “I’m going to tell you. That fellow—Arthur Dermot as he styles himself—is my cousin. His father is Dr. Rotherby’s brother. We were friends once, he and I—sort of brothers, you understand. He had a sister—a lot of sisters—one in particular—a lovely girl—Nan.” He paused. “Somehow you have always reminded me of Nan, so dainty, so queenly in your ways, so quick of sympathy—so full of charm. Well, I loved her—she loved me. It was a midsummer madness—one of those exquisite dreams that one revels in like a draught of wine, and then forgets.”

“That isn’t love,” said Frances.

He lifted his shoulders. “Isn’t it? Well, perhaps you are right. I never wholly forgot. But we were young. She was only twenty. No one suspected us of falling in love until the thing was done. Then there was an outcry—first cousins—no marriage. We hadn’t even begun to think of marriage, but I swear—I swear—I never meant to let her down. If they had left us alone, the thing would probably have fizzled out, but the fuss somehow worked us up to fever pitch. We met—by stealth—at night. She was young and very ardent. I was a damned cad. I own it. But she—she was like a flame, and in the end—well, you know what happened in the end. We came to our senses very early one summer morning. She was scared, and when I tried to calm her she flew into a passion. I got angry too. We quarrelled and separated. That very day the old Bishop, my trustee he was then, sent for me and told me he had a mission for me to execute in Australia. It was a trumped-up job. I knew it at the time. But I was hot-headed, and there had been talk of foreign travel before. I took it for granted that our dream had come to an end. I accepted and went.”

“How could you?” Frances said.

He raised his shoulders again. “I told you I was a brute. But at the time it seemed the only thing to do. The dream was over. One doesn’t sit over the cards in broad daylight.”

The cynicism habitual to him sounded in the last words. She shrank a little and withdrew her hand.

“Yes, I know,” he said. “You are a woman. You take the woman’s point of view. But I’m not defending myself. I’m just telling you the plain truth. I didn’t know when I went about poor Nan’s trouble. I had a letter from her three months after, telling me. She wanted to run away, to come and join me. It was a wild, hysterical sort of letter. It had taken six weeks to reach me, and it seemed likely she had changed her mind by that time. In any case I was just starting for an expedition into the Blue Mountains. I put her letter on one side to answer, but somehow I never did answer it. I thought she had probably exaggerated the whole thing. So I hoped for the best and let it slide.”

“How wicked!” Frances said. “How contemptible!”

The condemnation in her voice was all the deeper for its quietness. She sat before him cold, impersonal as a judge, her eyes fixed straight before her.

A curious shiver went through the man. He got up to cover it, and resumed his pacing of the room.

“I was away for over two years,” he went on, speaking as one impelled. “I never heard from her during that time. I almost forgot her. Then I came home. I found they had left Oxford. Did I tell you old Dermot Rotherby had held a professorship there, and Arthur was reading for the Bar? No one seemed to know where they were. Old Theodore, the Bishop, had been appointed to Burminster. I went to him, asked him for news. He said Dermot’s health had broken down, and they had taken a farm in the country. They had never been much to one another. He spoke very vaguely of them. It was Aunt Dorothea who let it out. She told me Nan had died mysteriously—that there had been a child—that they had changed their name in consequence—and then she got badly scared and begged me not to let the Bishop know she had told me, and not to dream of going near them as it was more than my life was worth. I must admit I didn’t feel drawn that way, since poor Nan was past help. So I decided to let sleeping dogs lie, and cleared out of the country again. I stayed away for some time, sometimes drifting back to London, but never for long. Then at last I got tired of wandering and came home. I went to Burminster, and met—you. You caught me then. You’ve held me ever since. And I could have won you—I could have won you—” He stopped abruptly. “What’s the good of talking? I’ve lost you now, haven’t I? You’ll never look at me again.”

“Never,” Frances said.

Her hands were clasped as she sat. There was no longer any agitation about her. She might have been a carven image, so still was she, so utterly aloof and removed from all emotion.

He glanced at her once or twice as he walked, and finally came and stood before her.

“I haven’t told you quite everything even now,” he said. “There’s one thing I’m almost afraid to tell you. Shall I go on—or shall I hold my peace?”

“Go on!” she answered in the same dead-level voice.

“You think nothing matters now,” he said. “You think you won’t care. You’re wrong. You will care—horribly.”

“I think I have got to know,” she said, “whatever it is.”

“All right,” he said recklessly. “You shall know. After some damnable fate had taken you to Tetherstones, after they had tried to murder me and failed, after that night at Fordestown when you refused to come with me, the devil entered into me, and I made up my mind I’d get you—at any cost. And so I played you a trick. I lied to you.” He bent down, trying to read her impassive face. “Do you understand? I tricked you—to get you up here.”

She did not flinch or give any sign of feeling. “Do you mean about my sketches?” she said.

“Yes. That’s just what I do mean. I have got them all here. No one has seen them but myself.”

A faint frown drew her forehead. “But you paid for them,” she said.

“I know. That was part of my damned scheme to get you into my power. You were always so independent. I thought when once you realized that you had been living on my money, it would break your spirit.”

“How—odd!” she said.

And that was all. No word of reproach or condemnation; yet the man winced as if he had been struck in the face.

“My God!” he said. “If you would only curse me! Any other woman would.”

“But why?” she said. “The fault was mine. I always knew—in my heart—that you were—that sort of man.”

“My God!” he said again. “You haven’t much mercy.”

She looked up at him. “I am sorry for you,” she said. “But—I don’t blame you. You were made that way.”

He struck his fist into his hand. “Frances, I swear to you—I swear to you—No, what’s the good of swearing? I’ll show you. Look here! We won’t talk any more to-night. We’re both dead beat. I’ll take you back to your hotel. And in a day or two—if you will trust me—I’ll show you that I am not—that sort of man. Will you trust me, Frances? Give me this one chance of making good? I’m a blackguard, I own it; but I can play the game if I try. Will you trust me?”

There was a hint of desperation in his voice, and, because she was a woman, that reached her where mere protestations had failed.

She held out her hand to him mutely, and as he took it she rose to her feet, looking him straight in the eyes. But she did not utter one word. She had spoken her condemnation and there was nothing left to say.

Out of her despair, tragically but fearlessly, she faced him. And to the man in his abasement there came a sense of greatness such as he had never before known.

Not by strength and not by strategy, but by purity of heart, she had conquered the devil in his soul.

CHAPTER V
THE VISION

London skies and ceaseless rain, and the roar and swish of London traffic over the streaming roads! The tramp of many hurrying feet, the echo of careless voices vaguely heard, and the grey, grim river flowing out to sea! How terrible it was! How inevitable! How—lonely!

She stood—a slim dark, figure—in the recess of the bridge leaning against the stone balustrade while the crowds passed by unheeding, and looked down into the dark-flowing water.

How long would it take, she wondered, how long a struggle in those dreadful depths before the soul rose free? And then—even then—would it be freedom, or slavery of another kind, a striving against yet more awful odds, a sinking into yet more fearful depths? Her tired mind wandered to and fro over the problem. So easy to die, if that were all! But after death—what then? Having shirked the one issue, could she possibly hope to be in any sense better equipped for that which lay beyond? Having failed hopelessly to prove herself in the one life, could there be any possibility of making a better bargain for herself in the next? Her brain recoiled from the thought. No, deliverance did not lie that way.

Perhaps it did not lie anywhere, she told herself drearily. Perhaps there was no deliverance. Like the prisoners of old, shackled to that stone of fate, perhaps it was her lot to wait until it descended upon her. She had sought so desperately for a way of escape, and now every channel was closed to her. Further seeking—further striving—were useless. God alone could help her now.

She looked up at the grey sky and felt the cold rain beating down upon her. Who was it who had once said: “Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you”? Strange that such words as those could ever be forgotten! They came upon her now almost as if they had been uttered aloud. And with them, very suddenly, came the memory of her prayer from the Tetherstones on the night of her great need. “From all evil and mischief, from sin, from crafts and assaults of the devil, Good Lord deliver us!” And how wonderful—how God-sent—had been her deliverance! The thought of little Ruth shot across her mind like a ray of light. Again the childish fingers seemed to clasp her own, closely, confidingly, lovingly. It was like a message to her soul—the angel of her deliverance!

It was then that the power to pray came to Frances, there on the open crowded bridge between the grey skies and the grey river with the grey stone to support her. She could not have said whence or how it came, but it possessed her for a space to the exclusion of all else. And she prayed—as she had prayed by little Ruth’s death-bed—with a fervour and a depth of faith that amazed herself. Not for deliverance, not for a way of escape, only for strength in her weakness—only for sustenance, lest the journey be too great for her! And when she ceased to pray, when the great moment passed—all too quickly, as such moments always must—when she woke again to physical misery and physical exhaustion, to the dripping skies and the leaden world and the dank uncleanness of the atmosphere, though no sign of any sort came in answer, yet she knew that her prayer was heard.

She turned and left the bridge, still with the feeling of that little hand in hers, and a sense of relief that was almost rejoicing in her heart. Though she had lost everything, though she trod the stones of the wilderness and the way before her was dark and steep and wholly unfamiliar, yet her fear had gone. The burden was lifted. For she knew that she was not alone. She went back through the rain-soaked streets, and still it seemed to her that that angel-presence went with her, guiding her feet. She had come out to seek a cheap lodging, but now that purpose had gone from her. She returned to the great station and the vast hotel as one led.

She passed in under the echoing glass roof where the shrieking of trains mingled with the noise of the scurrying multitudes. Everyone was in a hurry, it seemed, except herself, and she—she moved without haste and without lingering to a destination unknown.

She turned in to the hotel vestibule, leaving the noise and the seething crowds, conscious of a great quietness that came as it were to meet her and folded her round. It was late afternoon, and her intention had been to give up her room, but she had not done so, and she did not now turn to the office. She went instead to a settee in a corner and sat down there as one who waited. A few people passed to and fro, but no one accosted her. The place was dim and restful. She took no interest in them, or they in her.

Somewhere in the distance a page-boy was calling a number in a raucous voice. No one responded to it, and she vaguely wished he would stop; for he intruded upon the peace of the atmosphere like a yapping dog heard in the silent hours of the night. Now he was drawing nearer and becoming more obtrusive. Why did not someone stop him? If he had a message why couldn’t someone take it and send him away? Or if he couldn’t find the person for whom it was intended, where was the use of continuing that untuneful yell?

“Two—four—nine! Two—four—nine!” Now he had left the lounge and was coming down the corridor to the vestibule! The thing was beginning to get upon her nerves. She drew further back into the corner as he approached. Quite a small boy, with the sharp rat-like features of his type, and gleaming brass buttons all down his front that reflected little knobs of light from a distant lamp! His voice was stupendous, shattering the peace, piercing her brain with its insistence, pulverizing the vision that had brought her thither.

“Two—four—nine! Two—four—nine!” He came close to her, paused, yelled the number straight at her so that she shrank, and then passed on to the almost empty vestibule where he continued his intolerable cry without result.

His voice began to pass into the distance, to merge into the vague sounds that penetrated from without. Now she heard it no longer, and she breathed a sigh of thankfulness, and tried to return to the state of quiescent waiting which he had so rudely disturbed. But something had happened. She realized it with almost a sense of calamity. The little fingers no longer clasped her own, the feeling of peace had left her. The vision had fled.

She made a desperate attempt to call it back, to force her mind to grasp afresh the power that had so magically inspired her. But it was gone. The outer darkness came down upon her once more. The blackness of despair entered into her soul.

She sat for a space in blank hopelessness. Then it was all a myth, that strength so wonderfully bestowed, the trick of an overwrought brain—no more! Her prayer had been in vain. She was alone and sinking—sinking! A sound of great waters suddenly filled her ears. She saw again the grim, dark river flowing to the sea—so deep, so cold, so terrible! She lifted her face, gasping, as though those awful waters were overwhelming her. Her heart had ceased to beat. It felt like a stone within her, and she was cold to the very soul of her.

Ah, God, what was that? A cry in the distance—a voice that called! What was it? What was it? She grabbed her failing faculties to listen. It might be even yet the salvation for which she had prayed and waited. It might be—ah, what was it and why did it hold her so?

Breathlessly she listened, and for those moments she was like a prisoner on the very brink of death, hearing afar off the arresting cry that meant—that might mean—a reprieve. Now it grew nearer, it grew louder, it filled the world,—the universe—like a trumpet that could not be ignored. Words came to her through the wild chaos of her mind—three short words flung like a challenge far and wide—now a demand, now a menace—so that all must surely stop to listen!

“Two—four—nine! Two—four—nine!” That page with the fiery buttons was returning!

Along the corridor he came, and she caught back a burst of terrible laughter that rose from her stone-cold heart at the sight. A minute figure with a brazen voice that bawled trumpet-wise, and bearing a brass salver with a telegram upon it. Now he approached her again, and she marvelled at the noise he made. Surely he was made of brass, this messenger whom no one heeded!

“Two—four—nine! Two—four—nine!” He came to her, he stopped again. He shouted his challenge full at her. Then he ceased.

He thrust the salver towards her, and spoke in a husky, confidential undertone. “Ain’t that your number, miss?”

She stared at him, amazed rather by the unexpected cessation of the noise than by the words he spoke.

He thrust the salver a little nearer. “Ain’t that your number?” he said again. “Two—four—nine! Thorold! Ain’t that your name?”

She put out a hand mechanically. “Is it? Can it be? Yes, my name is Thorold.”

Her voice came mechanically too; it had a deadened sound.

The boy’s sharp eyes scanned her with pert curiosity. As she took the telegram, he pursed his lips to a whistle, but no sound issued from them.

She read the message in a sort of suspended silence that was peculiarly intense.

“I am in need of secretarial help if you care to resume your position here as a temporary measure. Please come to-night or wire. Rotherby. The Palace. Burminster.”

A voice out of the void! A forgotten voice, but none the less clear! She looked up as it were through thinning mists and saw the boy’s bright eyes watching her. Why was he interested, she wondered? What could it matter to him?

“Any answer, miss?” he suggested helpfully, and now she saw a gleam in the little rat-keen eyes and understood.

“No, none,” she said, “none. I shall answer it in person.”

He looked pinched for a moment, and then he grinned cheerily, impudently, philosophically.

“That’s right, miss,” he said. “Don’t you lose no more time about it! Time’s money to most of us.”

And with that he turned to go, but sharply, on impulse, she stayed him. “Boy, wait!”

He waited at once. “Yes, miss? Anything I can do for you?”

“No, nothing,” she said, “nothing. You have already done—much more than you know.” She pushed a hand down into the pocket of her rain-coat and found a halfpenny that had been there ever since the coat had been new. “I’ve carried this for luck,” she said, and managed to smile. “It’s all I can offer you. Will you have it?”

He stared at her for a second, then his shrewd grin reappeared. “Not unless you’ll toss me for it,” he said. “There’d be no luck without.”

She accepted the sporting suggestion. Strangely, in that moment, it appealed to her. She needed trivialities as never before.

“You can toss if you like,” she said.

He took the coin and spun it, caught it deftly, and looked at her. “Heads, miss?” he questioned.

“Yes, heads,” she agreed.

He slapped it forthwith on to the tray and handed it to her. “Heads it is—and I wish you good luck!” he said.

She picked up her halfpenny, for there was a compelling look in his eye which warned her that she was expected to play the game.

“Thank you,” she said, finding nothing else to say.

He drew himself up with a comic assumption of the grand manner. His little beady eyes twinkled humorous appreciation of her action.

“You’re welcome, miss,” he said ceremoniously, and turning, tramped away with his salver under his arm.

He left her laughing in a fashion that eased the tension of her nerves and took from her that terrible hysterical feeling of being off her balance that had so nearly overwhelmed her. She returned the halfpenny to her pocket and sat motionless for a few seconds to recover.

Yes, her vision had departed, but her prayer was answered. A way was opened before her, and, stony and difficult though it might be, she knew that the needed strength to take it would be given. Her heart was beating again and alive with a great thankfulness. It was not the way she would have chosen, but what of that? It was not for her to choose.

And so, as her normal powers returned to her, she did not stay to question. She rose to obey.

CHAPTER VI
THE INQUISITOR

“I have been given to understand,” said the Bishop, “that circumstances have arisen which have made you not unwilling to return to me for a time.”

“Yes, that is so,” Frances said, “if you care to make use of me.”

She stood before him in the book-lined study where so many of her hours had been spent in bitter bondage of body and spirit. The table with its typewriter was in its accustomed position in the window, and beyond the window she caught a glimpse of the grey stone of the cloister-arch, no longer decked in purple but splashed with the crimson of autumn leaves. The morning sun shone warmly upon it. It was a glorious day.

She had travelled down by a night-train, and not till the official hour of ten o’clock had the Bishop accorded her an interview. His austere countenance displayed no vestige of welcome even now, yet she had a curious conviction that he was not wholly displeased by her prompt reply to his invitation. His greeting of her, though cold, had been without acidity.

“Pray sit down!” he said, indicating a chair. “I have a few questions to ask you before we proceed any further. I beg that you will reply to them as concisely as possible.”

“I will do my best,” Frances said.

She took the seat facing him, the morning-light unsparingly upon her, and she knew that he looked at her with a closer attention than he had ever before bestowed upon her, as she did so.

“I will came to the point,” he said, in his curt, uncompromising way. “You realize of course that my message to you was not the result of chance, that I was actuated by a motive other than the mere desire to suit my own convenience?”

“Yes, I guessed that,” she answered quietly.

He nodded, and she thought that the ascetic lines of his face became a shade less grim as he proceeded. “I will not disguise from you the fact that as a secretary I have not yet found your equal, but that was not my reason for sending you that message. Now, Miss Thorold, kindly pay attention to what I am going to say, for time is short. I am due to conduct the service in the Cathedral in less than half-an-hour. I have a question to ask you primarily to which I must have a simple and unequivocal answer. When I discharged you some three months ago from my employment, I believed that an intrigue of an unworthy nature existed between my nephew and yourself. I ask you now—and you will answer me as before God—has there ever been any justification for that belief either before or since?”

He spoke with great solemnity and emphasis. His eyes—those fanatical deep-set eyes—were fixed upon her with an intensity that seemed to burn her.

“You will answer me,” he said again, “as before God.”

And Frances answered him with the simplicity of one to whom shame was unknown. “There has never been the smallest justification.”

Something of tension went out of the Bishop’s attitude, but he kept his eyes upon her with a scrutiny that never varied. “That being the case,” he said, “on the assumption that you have nothing to hide, I am going to ask you to give me a brief—really a brief account, Miss Thorold, of all that has occurred between the date of your dismissal and the present time.”

He spoke with the precision of one accustomed to instant obedience, but Frances stiffened at the request.

“I am sorry,” she said. “But I am not prepared to do anything of the kind.”

He lifted his thin brows. “You think my demand unreasonable?”

“Not only that. I think it impertinent,” Frances said, and still she spoke with that simplicity which comes from the heart.

“In—deed!” said the Bishop.

There would have followed a difficult pause, but very quietly she filled it. “You see, there are some parts of one’s life so sacred, that no man or woman on earth has any right to trespass there. In fact, I personally could not admit you even if I wished to do so. If I gave you the key, you would not know how to use it.”

“You amaze me!” said the Bishop. He got up and began jerkily to pace the room, much as his nephew had done on the night that she had sat in judgment upon him. “Are you aware,” he said after a moment, “that many men and women also have come to me with their confessions and have eased their souls thereby of many burdens?”

She watched him with her clear eyes as he moved, and in her look was something faintly quizzical. “Yes,” she said, “I can believe that many people find relief in throwing their burdens upon someone else. With me, it is not so. I prefer to bear my own.”

He stopped and confronted her. “You presume to treat this subject with levity!” he said.

“Oh, believe me, no!” She rose quickly and faced him. “I have been through too much for that. But what I have been through only God—who has kept me safe—will ever know. I could not even begin to tell an outsider that.”

The earnestness of her speech carried weight in spite of him. His face softened somewhat. “You are a strange woman, Miss Thorold,” he said. “But I am willing to believe that your motives are genuine though your methods do not always commend themselves to me. Sit down again, and kindly answer the few questions I shall put to you, which, you may as well be assured, are dictated neither by curiosity nor impertinence. I have been placed in a very peculiar position towards you, and I am doing what I conceive to be my duty.”

That moved her also. Perhaps for the first time in her life, she looked at him with a certain respect. “I will answer your questions to the best of my ability, my lord,” she said.

“Enough!” said the Bishop, and waved her back to her chair prior to reseating himself. “First then, when you left me, was it alone?”

“Quite alone,” said Frances.

“And you went—where?”

“I went to a village on the moors called Brookside. It is a few miles from Fordestown. I found a lodging there.”

“Ah! And my nephew knew your whereabouts?”

“Certainly he did. He had offered to find me employment. I had practically promised to be his secretary in the event of his writing a book.”

“You did not consider that in any sense an indiscreet thing to do?” questioned the Bishop.

She felt herself colour slightly, but she answered him without hesitation. “Yes, I did. But beggars can’t be choosers. I tried to keep things on a business footing. I thought he was merely sorry for me. I did not realize—” she stopped abruptly.

“That he was strongly attracted by you?” suggested the Bishop.

“I did not think that I was sufficiently attractive for that to be possible,” she answered with simplicity.

The flicker of a smile crossed his hard features. “You do not know human nature very well,” he observed. “But to continue! You went to Brookside. And then?”

“He came to see me there,” Frances said.

“And made love to you?”

“Yes.”

“Against your will?” asked the Bishop.

She met his look with great directness. “No, it was not—at first—against my will. But I misunderstood him. And he misunderstood me. Afterwards—very soon afterwards—I found out my mistake. That is all I have to say upon that subject. It is over and done with now, and I do not wish to think of it again.”

“I fear it has led to various complications,” said the Bishop, “which make it impossible to dismiss the matter in that fashion. However, we will pass on. May I ask you to give me the bald details of what followed?”

She hesitated. That he was already in possession of most of the circumstances attending her sojourn at Tetherstones was a fact which she did not question, but she had a strong repugnance to discussing them with him.

He read it, and in a moment, with a courtesy that surprised her, he tried to set her at her ease.

“You need not scruple,” he said, “to speak freely to me upon this matter. Nothing that you may tell me will go beyond this room.”

“Thank you,” she said, but still she hesitated. She could not tell him of that terrible night with Montague upon the moors. At last, with an effort, “I had an unpleasant adventure,” she said. “I was lost in a fog. A little blind girl from a farm near by called Tetherstones found me, and took me home with her. I was ill after that, and they nursed me.”

“They?” queried the Bishop.

“The Dermots,” she said.

“Ah!” said the Bishop.

He sat for a space lost in thought, his eyes still fixed upon her.

“Tell me about them!” he said at length. “Of what does the family now consist?”

She told him, and he listened with close attention.

“What is the father like?” he asked then.

“He is an invalid,” she said. “The son works the farm, and the girls all help. The mother spends most of her time looking after the old man.”

“Is he very old?” asked the Bishop.

“Very, I should say,” she answered.

“And the child—she is blind, you say?”

“Not now,” said Frances gently. “She is dead.”

He bent his head. “How did she come to die?”

“It was an accident,” Frances said. “It happened one night——”

She stopped. He was looking at her strangely, almost as if he suspected her of trying to deceive him.

“You are sure it was an accident?” he said.

She gazed back at him in amazement. “How could it have been anything else?”

He made a peculiar gesture as if to check her questioning. “And the old man? Tell me more about him! What form does his malady take?”

His manner was compelling. She found herself answering, though wonder still possessed her. “He suffers with his heart, and at times his brain wanders a little. He gave me the impression of being worn out, but I did not see a great deal of him.”

“You never saw him when he was ill?” said the Bishop.

“Yes, once.” She paused.

“Once?” repeated the Bishop.

“Yes. He was not quite himself at the time. I sat with him for an afternoon. He spoke rather strangely, I remember. He—” Again she paused. Memory was crowding back upon her. The inexplicable horror with which that day she had been inspired returned to her. And suddenly a strange thing happened. It was as if a curtain had been rent aside, showing her in a single blinding moment of revelation the phantom of terror from whose unseen presence she had so often shrunk in fear.

She uttered a sharp gasp, and turned from the hard eyes that watched her. “That is all I can tell you,” she said.

He made no comment of any sort, refraining from pressing her upon the subject with a composure that left her completely at a loss as to his state of mind. Her own mind at the moment was in chaos, so sudden and so overwhelming had been her discovery. She marvelled at her previous blindness, but she asked no question even in her bewilderment. Her loyalty to her friends at Tetherstones held her silent.

She was conscious of an urgent desire to be alone, to trace this thing to its source, to sort and arrange the many odd memories that now chased each other in wild confusion through her brain, to fit together once and for all this puzzle, the key to which had just been so amazingly given her.

But the Bishop still sat before her, an uncompromising inquisitor who would not suffer her to go until he had obtained the last iota of information that he desired.

He spoke, with cold peremptoriness. “Well, Miss Thorold, there remains the matter of your further adventures with my nephew. Your sojourn at Tetherstones at the time of your illness did not—apparently—terminate these. Do you object to telling me under what circumstances you left the Dermots?”

“I left them finally to get work,” she said.

“And in the first place?” said the Bishop.

She met his look again. “In the first place I left them at night with your nephew. We went to an inn at Fordestown. He went up to town the next day, and I took a lodging in the place. I went back to Tetherstones about a week later at the request of old Dr. Square who attended them. The little girl was ill and wanted me. She died that night.”

“And you stayed on?” said the Bishop.

“I stayed on until two days ago, when I also went to town in the hope of selling some of my sketches. Your nephew had offered to help me.”

“And that was your sole reason for going?” he said.

“No, not my sole reason.” She spoke deliberately, and said no more.

“But the only one you are prepared to give me?” he said.

“Yes,” she answered with decision.

He looked at his watch. “And you are not disposed to tell me how you came to run away—at night—with my nephew, a man with whom you wish me to believe that you had no desire to be associated?”

“No,” said Frances quietly.

“My opinion in the matter carries no weight?” he suggested.

She knitted her brows a little. “I would certainly rather you believed in me,” she said. “But—I cannot give you any convincing reason for so doing.”

“You can if you wish,” said the Bishop.

She shook her head. “I am afraid not.”

He rose. “By answering two questions which concern yourself alone. First, why are you not willing to marry my nephew?”

She looked at him, slightly startled. “Because I don’t love him,” she said.

“Thank you,” said the Bishop. “And is there any other man whom you would be willing to marry?”

His eyes held her. She felt the blood surge over her face, but she could not turn away. He waited inexorably for her reply.

For a space she did battle with him, then very suddenly, almost whimsically, she yielded.

“Yes, my lord,” she said, and she spoke with a certain pride.

He held out his hand to her abruptly; there was even a glimmer of approval in his look. “Miss Thorold, you have convinced me,” he said. “I have misjudged you, and I will make amends.”

It was not an apology. There was not a shadow of regret in his words, scarcely even of kindness, yet, oddly, they sent a rush of feeling to her heart that swept away her self-control. She stood speechless, fighting her emotion.

“Enough!” said the Bishop, turning aside. “I must go to prepare for the service. Perhaps you would like to walk in the garden and find refreshment there. I will ask you later to resume your secretarial duties.”

He was gone. She heard the door shut definitely behind him, and the garden with its old-world peace seemed to call her. Storm-tossed and weary, she went out into the warm sunlight, thanking God with her tears.

CHAPTER VII
FAIR PLAY

The deep tones of the Cathedral organ thrilled across the quiet garden. There came the chanting of boys’ voices, and then a silence. She wandered on through the enchanted stillness, past the cloister arch, and so by winding paths down to the haunted water whither her Fate had led her on that summer night that seemed so long ago.

Her tears had ceased. She walked like a nun, her hands folded before her. The pain in her heart was wonderfully stilled. She was not thinking of herself any more, but of Tetherstones, and the grim secret that had so suddenly been bared to her gaze. She saw it all now—or nearly all—that skeleton which they kept so closely locked away, and she marvelled at her blindness. To have lived among them, and to have seen so little!

The gentle white-haired mother with her patient silence—the chattering girls darkly hinting yet never revealing—the sombre prematurely-aged man who ruled them all, grinding the stones for bread, bitterly trampling all his ambitions underfoot, refusing to eat of the tree of life lest he should fail in that to which he had set his hand! And little Ruth—little Ruth—who had lived and died among them in her innocence—the child whom none had wanted but all had loved,—the child whose passing had wrung those terrible tears from the man who had never seemed to care!

Yes, she held the key to it all—that agony of despair, that extremity of suffering. The Bishop’s question: “You are sure it was an accident?” The old man’s halting enquiries—his relief at her reply—and then later his wandering words that had awakened such horror within her! His three-fold vow! What had he meant by that? And the place of sacrifice—the place of sacrifice! Again she seemed to hear the mumbled words. And her mind, leaping from point to point, caught detail after detail in a stronger light.

Now the picture of that terrible night stood out vividly before her. That shot in the moonlight, and her own conviction of tragedy! The coming of little Ruth to her deliverance—the banging of the door! Only Grandpa! The child’s words rushed back upon her. Only Grandpa! He had come in after those shots, had gone to the kitchen. How she remembered his weary, dragging gait! And she had fled—and she had fled! Again little Ruth’s words came back to her: “Oh, please come!” Ah, why had she not stayed with Ruth that night?

And the child had set out to seek her. Possibly she had gone to the old man first to see if she had returned to the kitchen, and not finding her, had hastened out to the Stones to search.

She tried to turn her imagination at this point, but a power stronger than herself urged it on. She saw the child flitting like a spirit through the night, over the lawn and through the nut-trees, pausing often to listen, but always flitting on again. She saw a dark shadow that followed, avoiding the open spaces, but never pausing at all. And she remembered the eyes that once had glared at her through those nut-trees and she had deemed them a dream!

Now she saw Ruth again out in the corn-field, hastening over the stubble, drawing near to the Stones—that place where the giant harebells grew. And the Stones themselves rose up before her, stark in the moonlight, and the great Rocking Stone which a child could set in motion from below but which none might overthrow. And the flitting form was climbing it to find her—ah, why had she left little Ruth that night?

The place of sacrifice! The place of sacrifice! The words ran with a mocking rhythm through her brain. She saw it all—the childish figure poised in the moonlight—the lurking shadow behind—a movement at first imperceptible, gathering in weight and strength as the great Stone swayed forward—and perhaps a faint cry. . . . She covered her eyes to blot out the dreadful vision. Ah, little Ruth! Little Ruth!

When she looked up again, it had passed. Yet for a space her mind dwelt upon the old man and his helplessness—his pathetic dignity—his loneliness. And the mother with the eyes that were too tired to weep! She could understand it all now. Piece by piece the puzzle came together. She did not wonder any longer at the devotion that had inspired them all to sacrifice. They had done it for the mother’s sake. Ah, yes, she could understand!

She reached the yew-tree by the lake where she and Montague had hidden together and stood still. The dark boughs hanging down screened the further side from her view, but the small fizz of a cigarette-end meeting the water awakened her very swiftly from her reverie. She drew herself together with an instinctive summoning of her strength to meet him.

But when he came round the great tree and joined her, she knew no fear, only a sense of the inevitableness of the interview.

He spoke at once, without greeting of any sort. “I’ve been waiting for you. You’ve seen the Bishop?”

“Yes,” she made answer. “He has been—very good to me.”

“I can hardly imagine that,” said Rotherby dryly. “But he means well. Look here! I don’t know whether you’ll be angry, but I’ve told him everything. It was the only thing to do.”

She stood before him with grave eyes meeting his. “Why should I be angry?” she said. “I think it was—rather brave of you.”

“Brave!” he echoed, and his lips twisted a little as though they wanted to sneer. “Would you say that of the cur that takes refuge behind your skirt? No, wait! I’m not here to torment you with that sort of platitudes. It doesn’t matter what you think of me. I don’t count. You’ll never see me again after this show is over. I promise you that. I’ve led you a devil’s dance, but I’m nearly done. There’s only one figure left, and you’ve got to step that whether you want to or not.”

“What do you mean?” Frances said, arrested rather by the recklessness of his speech than by the words he spoke.

“I’ll tell you,” said Rotherby. “It’ll be something of a shock, I warn you. But you have pluck enough for a dozen. First then, I’ve got to own up to a lie. You remember that affair at Tetherstones—when I was shot waiting for you?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Yes.” She knew what was coming, yet she waited for it with an odd breathlessness. Somehow so much seemed to hang upon it.

“It was not Arthur Dermot who fired that shot,” Rotherby said. “It was the old man, and he meant murder too. But Arthur and Oliver were both there and that put him off. They turned up unexpectedly from different directions and chased him, but somehow he got away. I bolted—with my usual bravery.” Again she saw his twisted smile. He went on, scarcely pausing. “I didn’t tell you the truth for several reasons. I daresay you can guess what they were. Arthur is sane enough except when he sees red. But the old man—well, the old man is a raving lunatic at times, though he has his lucid intervals, I believe. He ought to be shut up of course, but his wife has never been able to face it. Some women are like that. You would be. They keep him shut up when he goes off the rails. I believe he has only got one serious mania, and that is to kill me. So it has been fairly easy to guard against that until lately. It was poor Nan’s trouble that sent him off his head in the first place, but if I had kept out of the way he would probably have remained harmless. You understand that, do you?”

“I am beginning to understand—many things,” Frances said. But she could not speak of little Ruth to him.

He also seemed glad to pass on. “Well we needn’t discuss that any further. He got wind of my coming, and he did his best to out me. He didn’t succeed—perhaps fortunately, perhaps otherwise. Now to come to Arthur! He would have left me alone if it hadn’t been for you. You realize that, of course?”

“Oh yes,” Frances said, wondering with a faint impatience why he harped upon the matter.

He saw the wonder and grimly smiled at it. “I realized that too,” he said. “It has simplified matters considerably. I told you I would play the game. Well, I’ve played it. After I had got down here yesterday and seen the Bishop, I wrote to Arthur. I told him the whole truth from beginning to end. He hasn’t any illusions left by this time concerning you—or me either.”

“Ah, what made you do that?” Frances said.

Strangely in that moment, deeply as his words concerned her, it was not of herself she thought, but of the man before her, with his drawn, haggard face in which cynicism struggled to veil suffering.

“I don’t know why you did that,” she said. “It was not necessary. It was not wise.”

“It was—fair play,” he said, and still with set lips he smiled. “I did more than that, and I shall do more still—unless you relieve me of the obligation.”

“What do you mean?” she said. “What can you mean?”

A growing sense of uneasiness possessed her. Did he know Arthur Dermot’s nature? Was it not madness to dare again that tornado of fury from which she had so strenuously fought to deliver him? It had not been an easy thing, that deliverance. She had sacrificed everything to accomplish it, and now he had refuted all. “I think you must be mad,” she said. “Tell me what you mean!”

The bitter lines deepened about his mouth. “I will tell you,” he said, “and once more seek the refuge of your generous protection. I told him that I should go to-day to Fordestown, and from Fordestown I would meet him at the Stones at any hour that he cared to appoint, to give him such further satisfaction as he might wish to demand.”

“Montague!” The name broke from her, little accustomed as she was to utter it. “Are you really mad?” she said. “Are you quite, quite mad?”

“I am not,” he answered briefly.

“But—but he will kill you if you meet again!”

She gasped the words breathlessly. This thing must be stopped. At all costs it must be stopped.

He was still smiling in that odd, drawn way. She did not understand his look. He raised his shoulders at her words.

“He may. What of it?”

“Oh, you mustn’t go!” she said. “It would be madness—madness.”

“I have had my answer,” said Rotherby.

“You have?” She stared at him. “What is it? Quick! Tell me!”

He pulled a telegram from his pocket and gave it to her. She opened it with shaking hands. Three words only—brief, characteristic, uncompromising! “To-night at ten.” No signature of any sort—only the bald reply!

She gazed at it in silence. And before her inward sight there rose a vision of the man himself as she had seen him last, terrible in his wrath, overwhelming in his condemnation. Yet her heart leapt to the vision. He was the man she loved.

She looked up. “You mustn’t go,” she said. “Or if you do—I shall come too.”

“No,” said Rotherby.

She met his look. “Why do you say that? What do you mean?”

“I mean that you will never go anywhere with me again,” he said.

“But—but—” she stumbled over the words, hearing other words ringing like hammer-strokes in her brain,—“he will kill you—he has sworn to kill you if you go his way again.”

“Do you think you could prevent it,” said Rotherby.

She crumpled the paper in her hand. “Yes, I could—I would—somehow.”

“Very well. You can,” he said.

His manner baffled her. She looked at him uncertainly. “Tell me what you mean!” she said again.

He made a curious gesture, as of a player who tosses down his last card knowing himself a loser. “I mean,” he said, “that you can go in my place. Either that—or I go alone.”

Then she understood him, read the strategy by which he had sought to prove himself, and a deep pity surged up within her, blotting out all that had gone before.

“But I couldn’t possibly go,” she said. “It wouldn’t really help either, though—” she halted a little—“I know quite well what made you do it—and—I am grateful.”

“One of us will go,” Rotherby said with decision. “That I swear to God. It is for you to decide which.”

There was indomitable resolution in his voice. Very suddenly she realized that the way before her was barred. She drew back instinctively.

“But that is absurd,” she said. “You know quite well that there is nothing to be gained by going.”

“Except a modicum of self-respect,” said Rotherby. “It may not be worth much, but, strange to say, I value it. I will forego it for your sake, but for no other consideration under the sun.”

He was immovable; she saw it. Yet in despair she made another effort to move him. “But how could I go?” she protested. “It is utterly out of the question. You know it is out of the question.”

“Do I know it?” said Rotherby, with his faint half-scoffing smile.

“If you think at all, you must,” she said. “I couldn’t possibly face it. Not after—after——”

“After he has been told the truth in such a fashion that he cannot possibly doubt you,” said Rotherby. “Forgive me, but I thought—love—was capable of anything. If it isn’t, well—as I said before—I go alone. That is quite final, so we needn’t argue about it. There is a train to Fordestown at five this afternoon. I shall go by that, and pick up a conveyance at the station.”

“There are none,” she said, clutching at a straw.

“Then I shall go to The Man in the Moon for one. Anyway, I shall keep my appointment—with time to spare,” said Rotherby. “You might give us a thought before you turn in. It’ll be an interesting interview—even more so than our last.”

He swung upon his heel with the words, but Frances threw out a hand, grasping his arm.

“Montague,—please—you’re not in earnest! You can’t be! I mean—it’s so utterly preposterous.”

He stood still, the smile gone from his face. Very suddenly he threw aside the cloak of irony in which he had wrapped himself, and met her appeal with absolute sincerity.

“I am in earnest,” he said. “And it is not preposterous. Can’t you realize that a time may come in a man’s life when just for his own soul’s sake he has got to prove to himself that he is not an utter skunk? It doesn’t matter what other people think. They can think what they damn’ well please. But he himself—the thing that goes with him always, that sleeps when he sleeps and wakes when he wakes—do you think he can afford to be out with that? By God, no! Life isn’t worth having under those conditions. I’d sooner die and be damned straight away.”

He laughed upon the words, but it was a laugh of exceeding bitterness. And there came to Frances in that moment the conviction that what he said was right. No power on earth can ever compensate for the loss of self-respect.

Somehow that passionate utterance of his went straight to her heart. If she had not forgiven him before, her forgiveness was now complete and generous. She saw in him in the hour of his repentance the man whom once she could have loved, and she was deeply moved thereby.

“Are you satisfied?” he said. “Have I convinced you that I am playing the game—or trying to?”

She met his eyes though she knew that her own were wet. “Yes, I am convinced,” she said. “I am satisfied.”

“And what are you going to do?” he questioned.

Very simply she made answer. “I will go to Tetherstones.”

He drew a hard breath. “You’re not afraid?”

“No,” she said.

He put an urgent hand on her shoulder. “Frances,” he said, “you must make him understand.”

“He will understand,” she said.

He bent towards her. His voice came huskily. “It isn’t only—for myself,” he said. “You know that?”

“I know,” she said.

“I want to win your forgiveness,” he said, and there was appeal in the pressure of his hand. “Have I got that?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You are sure?” Voice and touch alike pleaded with her.

She felt the tears welling to her eyes. “From my very heart,” she said. “Yes, I am sure.”

She offered him both her hands, and he took and held them closely for a space, then abruptly he let them go.

“You will never love me,” he said, “but it may please you some day to remember that you taught me how to love.”

And with that he turned and walked away from her, not suffering himself to look back. She knew even as she watched him go that he would keep his word and that she would never see him again.

Out of sheer pity it came to her to call him back, but a stronger impulse held her silent. She became aware very suddenly of the crumpled paper in her hand, and, as the solitude of the place came about her with his going, she spread it open once again and read.

CHAPTER VIII
THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE

An owl was hooting in the moonlit distance, and the ripple, ripple, ripple of running water filled in the silences. A vast loneliness—the loneliness of the moors at night which is somehow like an unseen presence—wrapped the whole world as in a mantle which the weird cry of the wandering bird pierced but could not lift. The scent of wet bog-myrtle with now and then a waft of late honeysuckle was in the air. And from the east, silver, majestic, wonderful, a moon that was nearly full mounted upwards to her throne above the earth.

The rough track that led to the Stones was clearly defined in its radiance, and the Stones themselves stood up like sentinels on the hill. A wonderful place! Yes, a wonderful place, but how desolate, and barbaric in its desolation!

A woman stood at the gate that opened from the lane on to that steep track. She had walked up from the village in the moonlight, and before her it was as clear as day, but she stood as one hesitating to emerge from the shadows. Her hands were folded together as if in prayer.

A vagrant breeze stirring the high hedges that bordered the lane made her turn her head sharply to listen, and a faint, vague sound from down the hill brought a further movement of attention from her. But the sound ceased—it might have been some scurrying wild thing—the wind died down, sighing sadly away, and all was quiet again, save for that unseen, trickling water, and the far, haunting cry of the owl on the hill-side.

But her own movement had given her courage, or perhaps she feared to remain; for she paused no longer at the gate. Noiselessly she opened it and passed through. Then closing it, she stood for a moment, looking back. Down the lane a light glimmered, fitfully, seen through tree-branches—Tetherstones.

Her eyes sought it with a certain wistfulness, dwelt upon it, then resolutely, with a sigh half-checked she turned and mounted the hill, walking rapidly and soundlessly over the short grass beside the track. Nearer and nearer she drew to the Stones in their gaunt splendour, and the spell of the place encompassed her like an enchantment; but she hesitated no more. Firmly, steadfastly, she pursued her way.

Once indeed she gave a great start as a horned creature blundered suddenly up in front of her, and dashed away with clattering feet over the scattered stones, but she checked her instinctive alarm with swift self-assertion. It was only a goat more startled than herself. What was there to fear?

She came at last into the great circle, pushing through coarse straggling grass till she reached the smooth, boulder-strewn turf where the sheep and the goats had grazed. And here she stopped and looked around her in the moonlight with the feeling strong upon her that she was being watched.

Again, with an effort of will, she dismissed the thought. It was the stark emptiness of the place that induced it; of that she was certain. For there was no sign of movement anywhere; only the great Tether Stones standing round, a grim challenge to the centuries. She turned slowly after a time and faced the Rocking Stone. More than ever now in the moonlight had it the appearance of rolling towards her, as though set in motion by some unseen hand. And she shuddered as she watched it. The eeriness of the place was beginning to fold itself around her irresistibly, almost suffocatingly.

“Why should I be afraid?” she whispered to herself, clenching her hands desperately to keep down the panic that was knocking at her heart. “There is nothing here to hurt me. They are only stones.”

Only stones! Yet they seemed to threaten her by their very immobility, their coldness, their silence. She was an intruder in their midst, and whichever way she turned that sensation of being watched went with her, oppressed her. The hooting of the owl in the distance was somehow like the calling of a lost spirit, wandering to and fro, seeking rest—and finding none. . . . There was no other sound in all the world, though her ears were strained to listen. Even the music of the streams was hushed up here.

“They are only stones,” she said to herself again, and began to walk down the centre of the circle towards the Rocking Stone, defying that engulfing, fateful silence with all her strength. Within a dozen yards of it something stopped her, as surely as if a hand had caught her back. She stood still, not breathing.

Was it fancy? Was it reality? The monstrous thing was moving! Like a seated giant giving her salutation it swayed slowly forward. And what were those long, crimson streaks upon it that gleamed as if wet in the moonlight?

She stood as one transfixed, possessed by horror. A devil’s paradise! The words rushed meteor-like through her brain. Surely this gruesome place was haunted by devils!

Fascinated, she watched the great stone. Would it leave its resting-place, roll down to her, annihilate her? Had it started upon its dread course she knew she could not have avoided it. She was paralyzed by terror, possibly the more intense because of its utter unreason.

That some animal might have set the thing in motion was a possibility that did not even cross her mind. She knew, without any proof, that some evil influence was at work. She could feel it with every gasping breath she drew.

Downwards and yet further downwards rocked the great Stone, and at the last there came a grinding noise as though some substance were being pulverized beneath it. It was unutterably horrible to the looker-on, but still she could not turn and flee. She was as much a prisoner as though she were indeed tethered to one of those grim monsters that stood about her.

Spell-bound as one in a nightmare, she stood and watched, quaking and powerless, saw the thing begin to lift again like some prehistoric beast of prey rising from its slaughtered victim, saw it roll slowly back again soundlessly, as if on hinges, with the inevitable poise which alone kept it in its place, saw the dreadful crimson streaks and patches that dripped down its scarred front. And suddenly the bond that held her snapped. She turned from the dreadful sight and fled through the ghastly solitude as if she fled for her life.

Again the cry of the owl sounded, much nearer now, and she thought it was the shriek of a pursuing demon. Through that grass-grown place of sacrifice she tore like the wind, so goaded by fear as to be hardly conscious of direction. And now the shriek of the demon had become a yell of mocking laughter that died away with dreadful echoes among the Stones. . . .

She reached the open hill-side beyond that awful Circle, and here abruptly she was stayed. A maddening pain awoke in her side and she could go no further. The pain was acute for a few seconds, and she crouched in the grass in her extremity, fighting for breath. Then, gradually recovering, she began to tell her racing heart that she had fled from shadows. Yet it was no shadow that had moved that Rocking Stone.

Her strength returned to her at last and she stood up. But she could not return to that terrible trysting-place. Her knees were shaking still. There was only one course left if she would keep her tryst, and though her whole soul shrank from the thought of it, yet was she in honor bound to fulfil that pledge. Since she could not return, she must wait on the hill-side till he came. The appointed time must be drawing near now, and if she knew him he would not be late.

Even with the thought there rose a sound from the valley below her,—a clear and beautiful sound that went far to dispel that sense of lurking evil that so oppressed her—the church-clock striking ten. It renewed her courage, it stilled that wild, insensate fear within her. It gave her the power that belongs to purity.

No longer weak and stumbling, she left the spot where she had crouched and walked across the grass towards the track by which he would come. And as she went, there came to her the clang of the gate that led out of the lane. He was coming!

She realized abruptly that she could not stand and await him in the full moonlight. The shadows of the Stones fell densely not fifty yards away, and, conquering that instinct that urged her in the opposite direction, she directed her steps towards them. The consciousness of another human presence went far to disperse the ghostly influence of the place. The definite effort that lay before her drove the thought of forces less concrete into the background. At the very entrance to the arena, screened by the shadow of the first great Tether Stone she waited for him.

Immediately below her was the cattle-shed with its thatched roof, within which she and Montague Rotherby had found shelter on that night of fog when deliverance had so wonderfully come to her. Her mind dwelt upon the memory for a moment, then swiftly flashed back to the present, for, distinct in the stillness, there came to her the sound of his feet upon the track. Her heart gave a wild bound of recognition. How well she knew that sound!

Slow and regular and unfalteringly firm, they mounted the steep ascent while she stood waiting in the shadow. Now she could see him, a dark and powerful figure, walking with bent head, coming straight towards her, pursuing his undeviating course. Now he was close at hand. And now—

What moved her suddenly to look towards the cattle-shed—the flash of something that gleamed with a steely brightness in the moonlight, or an influence more subtle and infinitely more compelling. She knew not, but in that moment she looked, and looking, sprang forward with a cry. For in the entrance, clear against the blackness behind, she saw a face, corpse-like in its whiteness, but alive with a murderous malice,—the face of a devil.

Her cry arrested the man upon the path. He stood still, and she rushed to him with arms outspread, intervening between him and the evil thing that lurked in the shed.

She reached him, flung her arms around him. “Arthur—Arthur! For God’s sake—come away from this dreadful place—this dreadful place!”

Wildly she poured forth the words, seeking with frantic urgency to turn him from the path. But he stood like a rock, resisting her.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

She tried to tell him, but explanation failed. “I came to meet you, but—there is—there is something dreadful in the barn. Don’t go near! Come away! Oh, come away!”

But still he stood, resisting her desperate efforts to move him. “I have come to meet Rotherby,” he said. “You go—and let me meet him alone!”

The curt words steadied her somewhat, but she could not let him go. “Arthur, please,—listen!” she urged. “He isn’t here. I came in his place. But there is something terrible in the shed. I don’t know what. I only know—I only know—that the whole place is full of evil, and the thing I saw—the thing I saw—is probably one of many.”

She was trembling violently, and his hand came up and supported her. “Oh, why did you come?” he said, and his tone held more of reproach than questioning.

She answered him notwithstanding. “I had to come. There was no choice. But don’t let us stay! I have seen the Rocking Stone move. I have seen—a thing like a devil in the barn.”

“How long have you been here?” he said.

She was shivering still. “I don’t know—a long time. But that awful thing——”

He turned towards the barn. “Your nerves have been playing you tricks,” he said. “There is nothing here.”

She hung back, still clinging to him, reassured by his confidence in spite of herself, yet afraid beneath her reassurance.

“It couldn’t have been fancy. I am not fanciful. Arthur, don’t go! Don’t go!”

He stopped and looked at her, and in his eyes was that which strangely moved her, stilling her entreaty, overwhelming her fear, banishing every thought in her heart but the one great rapture of her soul as it leaped to his.

So for a long moment they stood, then his arm went round her. He turned aside.

“We will go to the Stones,” he said, “and leave these banshees to look after themselves. It was probably a goat you saw.”

She went with him, almost convinced that he was right and that her fancy had tricked her. She would have gone with him in that moment if all the ghosts of the centuries had awaited them among the Stones.

As they passed into the great arena, he uttered a groan, and his arm relaxed and fell. “This is absolute madness,” he said. “I told you before. I am tied. I am a prisoner. I shall never be free.” The iron of despair was in his voice.

“Then I will be a prisoner too,” she said.

“No—no! Why did that scoundrel send you to me? Why didn’t he come himself?” He flung the words passionately, as though the emotions surging within him were greater than he could control.

But she answered him steadfastly, without agitation. “Arthur, listen! He sent me to you because he is ashamed of all that has gone before—and because he wished to make amends. He has gone out of my life. But I have forgiven him, and—some day—I hope you will forgive him too.”

“Never!” he said. “Never! I would have killed him with my naked hands if I had had the chance.”

She suppressed a shiver at the memory his words called up. “That is not worthy of you. Forgiveness is a greater thing than revenge—oh, so much greater. And love is greater than all. You won’t believe it, but—he was capable of love.”

“He was capable of anything,” Arthur said, “except playing a straight game.”

“You are wrong,” she said earnestly. “You are wrong. He has played a straight game now in telling you the truth and in sending me to you. He made me come, do you understand? I didn’t want to—I would rather have done anything than come. But he would have come himself if I hadn’t. And so——”

“You came to save his life?” suggested Arthur, with a bitter sneer.

She answered him with the simplicity that is above bitterness. “I came to save you both.”

He looked at her with a certain grimness. “And why didn’t you want to come?”

Again with absolute directness she answered him. “Because I knew how it would hurt you to send me away again.”

He swung away from her and again she heard him groan. “This is well named the place of sacrifice,” he said. “Do you remember the day I first brought you here? I loved you then, and I knew it was hopeless—utterly hopeless. It is more so than ever now. I can’t go on. I won’t go on. This thing has got to stop. God knows I have fought it. You have got to fight it too,—go on fighting till it dies.”

“It will rise again,” she said.

His hands clenched. “I’ve never been beaten yet,” he said.

To which she made no answer, for she knew, as he did, that there is no power in earth or heaven so omnipotent as the power of Love.

They went on together, side by side down that great arena, the gaunt Stones all around them like monstrous idols in a forgotten place of worship. They drew near to the Rocking Stone, and very suddenly Arthur stopped.

He stood before it in utter silence, and she wondered what was passing in his mind. The moonlight shone full upon the face of the Stone. She saw again those strange red streaks of which old Mr. Dermot had told her. But her fear was gone, swallowed up in that which was infinitely greater—her love for the man at her side.

How long they stood thus she did not know. She began to realize that he was bracing himself anew for sacrifice, that he was battling desperately for the mastery against odds such as even he had never faced before. She saw him once more as a gladiator, terrible in his resolution, indomitable as the Stone he faced, invincible so long as the breath remained in his body. His last words kept hammering in her brain with the swing and rhythm of a haunting refrain: “I’ve never been beaten yet—I’ve never been beaten yet.” And through them, faint, thread-like as a far-off echo, she heard another voice—whether of child or angel she knew not: “You’ll find it up by the Stones, where the giant hare-bells grow. It’s the most precious thing in the world, and when you find it, keep it—always—always—always!”

The giant hare-bells! There they grew at the foot of that grim Stone where the child had lain all night, unafraid because God was there. She saw them, pale in the moonlight, and in memory of little Ruth she stooped to gather one.

It was then that it happened,—so suddenly, so appallingly,—with a crash as if the heavens were rent above her. A blinding red flame seemed to spring from the very ground in front of her, the smell of burning choked her senses. The whole world rocked and burst into a blaze. She went backwards, conscious of Arthur’s arms around her, conscious that they fell together . . . or were they hurled into space among the wandering star-atoms to drift for evermore hither and thither—spirits without a home?

“From all evil and mischief, from sin, from the crafts and assaults of the devil, from Thy wrath—and from everlasting damnation” (that dreadful irremediable doom in which she had never believed), “Good Lord, deliver us.”

CHAPTER IX
WHERE THE GIANT HARE-BELLS GROW

Who was that whispering behind the screen—Lucy and Nell, could it be, audible as ever, though hidden from sight? It was like a long-forgotten story, begun years since and never finished.

“Dr. Square says she may just drift away and never recover consciousness at all; but her heart is a little stronger than it was, and she is able to take nourishment, so she may rally and sleep it off. I wonder if she will remember anything if she does.”

“Oh, I hope—I hope she won’t!” This was surely Lucy’s voice, hushed and tearful. “She may have seen him lying dead, all torn by the explosion. It would be dreadful for her to remember that.”

“Well, thank God he is dead!” Nell spoke stoutly, as one expectant of rebuke. “The life we have led has been enough to kill us all. Whatever happens, things must get better now.”

“Oh, hush!” imploringly from Lucy. “It is wrong—it must be wrong to talk like that.”

“I don’t see why,” combatively from Nell. “God must have arranged it all. And when you’ve carried a burden that’s too big for you, it can’t be wrong to be thankful when He takes it away.”

“But think of Mother!” Lucy’s whisper was broken with tears.

“I do think of her. And I know she is thankful too. My dear, you are thankful yourself. Why disguise it? It isn’t wrong to be thankful.” Nell spoke with vigorous decision. “If only she gets over this—and I don’t see why she shouldn’t, for it’s only shock, nothing else—why, all our troubles will be over. The inquest was the simplest thing in the world—nothing but sympathy and condolences, no tiresome questions at all. I’m ashamed of you, Lucy, for having so little spirit. Don’t you see what it means to us? Why, we’re free—we’re free—we’re free!”

To which, sighing, Lucy could only answer, “It doesn’t seem right. And she hasn’t got over it yet, and even if she does——”

“Which she will!” Nell’s voice arose above a whisper and ran with confidence. “Which she shall and will! How I would like to know what brought her there! I wonder if she will ever tell us.”

“I wonder,” murmured Lucy.

---

Thereafter for a space there was silence, and then there began that gradual groping towards the light which comes to a brain awakening. Who was it who was lying dead among the Stones? And why were they all so thankful? Then at last she opened her eyes to the soft sunshine of late autumn and awoke from her long, trance-like sleep.

Someone rose to minister to her, and she saw the white-haired mother with her patient eyes bending over her. She smiled upon her with a great tenderness.

“So you are awake!” she said, and Frances knew that she was glad. “Don’t try to move too quickly! Just wait till your strength comes back!”

“Am I ill then?” Frances asked her, wondering.

And she answered gently, “No, dear. Only tired. You will be quite all right presently. Just lie still!”

So Frances lay still and pondered, fitting the puzzle piece by piece, slowly, painfully, till at length with returning memory the picture was complete. But who was lying dead among the Stones? And why—oh, why—were they thankful?

She could not ask the quiet woman by her side. The sad face bent over her work somehow held her silent, so deep were its lines of suffering. But the need to know was strong upon her. Someone was lying dead. Someone had been killed. Who? Oh, who? And what had caused that frightful explosion up there among the Stones?

There came to her again the memory of Arthur’s arms holding her. And they had gone out together into the star-wide spaces. How was it that she had returned—alone?

Something awoke within her, urging her. She sat up, not conscious of any effort.

Mrs. Dermot came to her. “What is it, dear? Are you wanting something?”

Frances looked at her, but still she could not ask that dread question. Her lips refused to frame it. Not of anyone could she have borne to ask that which so earnestly she desired to know. She must find out for herself. She must go to the Stones. If he were dead—and in her heart she knew he must be—she would meet his spirit there.

And she must go alone.

She met Mrs. Dermot’s gentle questioning very steadfastly. “I want to get up, please,” she said. “I am going to the Stones—to look for something.”

She expected opposition, but she met with none. Mrs. Dermot seemed to understand.

“Whatever you wish, dear,” she said. “But don’t overtax your strength!”

She helped her to dress, but she did not offer to accompany her. And so presently Frances found herself out in the misty sunshine, hastening with a desperate concentration of will towards the place of sacrifice.

She never remembered any stages of her journey later, so fixed was she upon reaching her destination. But as she sped up the steep track, her heart was racing within her, and, conscious of weakness, she had to pause ere she reached the top to give herself breathing-space.

Then she pressed on, never once looking back, passing the cattle-shed without a glance, reaching the Stones at length and moving fearlessly in among the long shadows cast by the setting sun.

A warm glow lay everywhere, softening the dread desolation of the place. She walked straight down the great circle, looking neither to right nor to left, straight to that point whence she had stood and watched the ghostly Rocking Stone sway before her like a prehistoric monster in dumb salute. And here she stood again, arrested by a sight that made her suddenly cold. The Rocking Stone was gone,—crumbled into a shattered heap of grey stones, around which the giant hare-bells still flowered in their purple splendour!

She caught her breath. This was where he was lying dead. This was where she would meet his spirit.

Again little Ruth’s message ran like a silvery echo through the seething uncertainty of her soul. “You’ll find it up by the Stones, where the giant hare-bells grow—something that you’re wanting—that you’ve wanted always—very big—bigger even than the Rocking Stone. If you can’t find it by yourself, Uncle Arthur will help you. You’ll know it when you find it—because it’s the most precious thing in the world.”

The echo sank away, and the loneliness that was like an unseen presence came close about her. The silence was intense, so intense that she heard her own heart jerking and stopping, jerking and stopping, as the hope that had inspired her slowly died.

She stood motionless before that tragic heap of stones, and the unseen presence drew closer, closer yet. Then, rising clear from the valley, there came to her the sound of the church-clock striking the hour.

That released her from the spell. She lifted her clasped hands above the ruin before her and prayed,—prayed aloud and passionately, pouring forth the anguish of her soul.

“O God, let him come to me—only once—only once! O God, send his spirit back to me,—if only for one moment—that we may know that our love is eternal—that holy thing—that nothing—can ever change—or take away!”

The agony of her appeal went up through the loneliness, and she stood with closed eyes and waited for her answer. For she knew that an answer would be sent. Already, deep within her, was the certainty of his coming. Had she not told him on this very spot that their love would rise again?

And so she waited for that unseen presence among the barren and desolate stones, felt it drawing near to her, felt the surge and quiver of her heart at its nearness. And then—very suddenly—a great wave of exaltation that was almost more than she could bear caught her, uplifted her, compelled her. She turned by no volition of her own,—and met him face to face. . . .

“Arthur!” she said.

And heard his answering voice, deeply moved, deeply tender. “Frances! Frances! Frances!”

She was in his arms, she was clinging to him, before she knew that it was flesh and blood that had answered her cry. But she knew it then. His lips upon her own dispelled all doubt, banished all questioning. The rapture of those moments was the rapture which few may ever know on earth. He had come back to her, as it were, from the dead. Later, it seemed to her that no words at all could have passed between them during that wonderful re-union. Surely there are no words that can express the joy of those who love when at last they meet again! Is there in earth or Heaven any language that can utter so great a gladness?

She only remembered that when speech again was possible they were walking side by side through the chequered spaces of sunlight and shadow that lay between the Stones. And the desolation was gone for ever from her heart.

His arm was about her. He held her very closely.

“Why did you come up here?” he asked her.

And when she answered, “To find you,” he drew her closer still.

“My mother told me. I followed you. She would have told you everything if you had asked, but the doctor said it must come gradually. She was afraid of giving you a shock.”

“I was afraid to ask,” said Frances.

He looked down at her. “You’re not afraid now. Shall I tell you everything?”

She met his look. “I know a good deal. I know about—Nan, and about your father,—at least in part.”

“You have got to know—everything,” he said, and stopped where he had stopped once before to gaze out between the Stones to the infinite distance. “And you are to understand, Frances, that what has passed between us now can be wiped out—as if it had never been, if you so desire it. You know about—my sister Nan.” His voice dropped. “I can’t talk about her even to you, except to tell you that you are somehow like her. That was what made my father take to you. He didn’t take to any strangers as a rule. Neither did I.” Again she was conscious of the close holding of his arm, but he did not turn his eyes towards her. He went sombrely on. “We gave up everything and came here because the trouble over Nan had turned his brain. He wanted to tear across the world and kill my cousin. So did I—once. But—my mother—well, you know my mother. You realized long ago that all we did was for her sake. And so—since so far as we knew, my father had only the one mania and was sane on all other points—we came here. Nan’s baby was born here. We settled down. My father never liked the life, but he got better. We hoped his brain was recovering. Then—one winter night—the madness broke out again. I was away on business. He got up in the early morning, went to Nan’s room, and ordered her out of the house with her child. He terrified her, and she went. The next morning she was found up by the Stones in deep snow, dead. The child was living, but she was always a weakling, and she lost her sight. My father had a seizure when he heard that Nan was dead. In his delirium he told them what he had done. But when he came to himself he had forgotten, and his distress over the loss of Nan was heart-rending. Of course he ought to have been sent away. My uncle, Theodore Rotherby, had urged it from the outset; but my poor mother would not hear of it. And I—well, I hadn’t the heart to insist. After that, I never left home again. Either Oliver or I kept guard day and night. But except for occasional outbursts of unreasonable anger he became much better, almost normal. He regarded me as his gaoler and hated me, but he always worshipped my mother. I believe it would have killed him to be parted from her. Better if it had perhaps, but—it’s too late now. What I did, I did for the best.” He uttered a heavy sigh. “It brutalized me. I couldn’t help it. It didn’t seem to matter. Nothing ever mattered till you came. I was harsh with the girls, I was harsh with everyone—except my mother. Life was so damnable. There were times when the burden seemed past bearing. The perpetual strain, year in, year out,—only God knows what it was.”

“I can guess,” whispered Frances.

His brooding eyes softened somewhat, but still he did not look at her. “Then you came. You changed everything. But that letter—you remember that lost letter? My father found it, recognized the writing, knew that my cousin was in the neighbourhood. That brought everything back. Somehow from the first he always connected you with Nan. There is a resemblance, though I can’t tell you where it lies. On the night my cousin came to meet you at the Stones—that ghastly night—he broke out. I think you know what happened. He tried to murder him, but he got away. Oliver was there, but he ought to have been earlier. I blamed him for that. The mischief might have been avoided. However, my cousin got away, and my father dodged us and came back to the house. There he left his gun, thinking he had killed his man. Then he must have seen the child. Possibly she spoke to him. I don’t know. But the lust for murder was on him that night. He followed her to the Stones, dodging us again, and saw her climb on to the Rocking Stone. He had made a great study of the Stones, and it was he who had discovered how to make the thing move. He used his knowledge on that occasion, and—and—well, you know what happened.” His arm tightened about her convulsively.

“Oh, don’t tell me any more!” Frances said.

He bit his lip and continued. “It all came out afterwards in his ravings, but we suspected foul play before. I was practically sure of it. Frances, it nearly killed my mother. I shall never forget her agony as long as I live.”

“My dear—my dear!” Frances said. But she was thinking of the man’s own agony which she had witnessed in the farm-kitchen on the night of little Ruth’s death.

He drew a hard breath between his teeth. “Then, as you know, he was taken ill. And I hoped he would die. My God! How I hoped he would die! That night with you in the garden—do you remember? The night you offered yourself to me! I could have fallen at your feet and worshipped you that night. But—I had to turn away. You understood, didn’t you? You knew?” A passionate note sounded in his voice.

“Oh yes, I knew,” Frances said.

He went on with an effort. “I was nearly mad with trouble myself after that. And afterwards—when you were gone and I heard from Maggie that you had been inveigled into going up to town alone to meet that scoundrel, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to follow you. I went to his rooms and I dogged him that night. I was like a man possessed—as much a murderer at heart as my father had ever been. If you hadn’t stopped me, I should have killed him. But—oh, Frances,—” his deep voice broke—“nothing was worth while after that lie of yours. If it hadn’t been for my mother I should have put an end to myself.”

She laid her cheek against his shoulder. “Arthur! Do you think I found it easy—to lie? It nearly killed me too.”

“Wait!” he said. “Hear it all! I came back. I found my father better. But I was at the end of my endurance. I couldn’t go on. I told my mother so. I told her he must be certified insane and put away. She said I was quite right, though I know it would have broken her heart to have done it. I told her I must go right away too—to save my own sanity. And she—God bless her—she understood without any words. She just told me to go. Then I had my cousin’s letter, telling me everything, vindicating you. I shouldn’t have believed him if I hadn’t known you. But—knowing you—I knew it was true. He asked for a meeting, and I agreed. Somehow I couldn’t help it. It seemed inevitable. You know how sometimes one is pushed by Fate. I was bound to agree. I don’t know what would have happened if I had met him. I might have killed him. I can’t say. But I had only my hands to do it with. I didn’t set out to kill him. And then—you came instead. You were frightened. You thought you had seen a devil. Do you know what it was you saw?”

“Your father!” she whispered.

“My father, yes. He had been wandering among the Stones, and I can only think that he had remembered about the child, and in a fit of mad remorse he had made up his mind to destroy the Rocking Stone,—possibly himself also. It is all surmise now. Anyhow, when you saw the Stone move, he must have been putting the charge underneath. And afterwards—when you and I were standing there—the murderous impulse must have seized him again. Perhaps he took me for Montague, and he may have thought you were Nan. I don’t know. It is impossible to say. Anyway, he fired the fuse, and blasted the Stone. God only knows how we escaped unhurt. But he—but he——”

“He was killed?” said Frances.

“Yes, instantly. When I came to myself, you were unconscious and he was lying dead among the stones. Oliver and some of the men heard the noise and came up. We carried you back. I thought you were dead, but Dr. Square said it was only shock, that in a few days, given absolute quiet, you might recover.”

“A few days!” said Frances, wonderingly.

“It happened a week ago,” he said. “You were semi-conscious once or twice, and then you seemed to sleep. That was what brought you back.”

“How amazing!” she said.

He turned for the first time and looked down into her upraised face. “I thought you would never come back,” he said, and in voice and look she gauged the misery to which he gave no words. “I never had any hope.”

The tears sprang to her eyes. She clung to him voicelessly for a few seconds. Then: “And I thought you were dead!” she whispered. “That was why I didn’t dare to ask!”

He took her shoulders between his hands, holding her slightly from him. “Frances, listen!” he said. “I’m going to be fair to you. I won’t take you—like this. You don’t know what I am—a hard man, melancholy, bitter, the son of a murderer, not fit for any woman to love, much less marry. I am going away—as I said. Maggie and Oliver will run the farm. My mother will stay on with them. The girls will either stay or find their own way in the world. I’ve come to see that it isn’t for me to hold them in any longer. Maggie made me realize that—you too. But I always had the thought of Nan before me. That was what made me so hard with them. But I’m going away now. And you will go back to the Bishop. He wants you. I believe he will be decent to you. I have heard from him about you. Some day—some day—you will find a man worthy of you. Not me—not Montague—someone you can give your whole heart to—and trust.”

He paused a moment. His face was quivering. She saw him again—a gladiator fighting his desperate battle, conquered yet still not beaten to earth, holding her from him, defying the irresistible, ready to make the last and utmost sacrifice, that she might suffer no hurt.

And then, with a gesture of renunciation, he dropped his hands from her and let her go.

“That’s all,” he said, and there was a tremor in his voice which thrilled her through and through. “You are free. I am going. Good-bye!”

He turned away from her with the words. He would have gone. But in that instant Frances spoke—in the language that comes from the heart and speaks to the heart alone.

“I am not free,” she said, “and you can never make me so. I am yours—as you are mine—for ever and ever. Nothing can ever alter that, because—God made it so.”

Then, as he stood motionless, she went close to him, twining her arm in his, drawing him to her.

“Ah, don’t you understand?” she said. “I love you—I have always loved you—I shall love you till I die.”

And then he yielded. He turned with a low, passionate sound that was almost of pain, and held her to him, bowing his head against her, beaten at last.

“You are sure?” he said, and she felt the sob he stifled. “Frances, you are sure? Before God—this is for your own sake—not for mine?”

She held him to her, so that the throbbing of her heart was against his own. “But you and I are one,” she said. “God made us so.”

---

The church-clock struck the hour again, and they looked at one another with the dismay of lovers for whom time flies on wings. Down the hill at the farm they heard Roger’s voice uplifted in cheery admonition. The cows were being driven back to pasture for the night, and Maggie’s song came lilting through the gloaming.

“Shall we go back to Tetherstones?” Arthur said.

And Frances nodded silently.

They left the place of sacrifice hand in hand.

THE END

---

A Selection from the

Catalogue of

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

Complete Catalogues sent

on application

---

Lew Tyler’s Wives

By

Wallace Irwin

Women often wonder just how much they mean in the lives of the men they marry, and how deeply they touch the hearts of the men they love. In “Lew Tyler’s Wives” Wallace Irwin shows us a very human American man, as full of frailty as of charm, and the women who loved him, Jessie, Coleen, Virginia. How he loved each of them, how much and how truly, is told with an understanding which men will envy, women long for if they’re Jessies, smile at if they’re Virginias, and resent if they’re Coleens.

---

G. P. Putnam’s Sons

New York

London

---

The Luck of the Kid

By

Ridgwell Cullum

Author of “The Heart of Unaga,”

“The Man in the Twilight,” etc.

This new Cullum novel is a tale of pioneer life on the Yukon-Alaska frontier; it has all the author’s familiar qualities—strength of story, vividness of description, rapidity of action, and sure development of character.

Bill Wilder, the Canadian gold-king, is one of Cullum’s finest creations, and the reader will follow him breathlessly in his adventures with the fur trappers and gold prospectors, and in his search for “the lost white girl,” who proves to be “The Kid.” The story of the English missionary who loses his life on the gold trail, and the Indian servant who lives only to avenge his death, is a thrilling one, which gains in interest on every page.

---

G. P. Putnam’s Sons

New York

London

---