"You shall tell me how these months have gone with you while we dine," said he. "Your letters told me nothing of your troubles."
"I did not mean them to," replied Sylvia.
"I guessed that, my dear. It was like you. Yet I would rather have known."
Only a few hours before he had stood upon the deck of the Channel packet and had seen the bows swing westward of Dover Castle and head toward the pier. Would Sylvia be there, he had wondered, as he watched the cluster of atoms on the quay, and in a little while he had seen her, standing quite alone, at the very end of the breakwater that she might catch the first glimpse of her lover. Others had traveled with them in the carriage to London and there had been no opportunity of speech. All that he knew was that she had been alone now for some weeks in the little house in Hobart Place.
"One thing I see," he said. "You are not as troubled as you were. The look of fear—that has gone from your eyes. Sylvia, I am glad!"
"There, were times," she answered—and as she thought upon them, terror once more leapt into her face—"times when I feared more than ever, when I needed you very much. But they are past now, Hilary," and her hand dropped for a moment upon his, and her eyes brightened with a smile. As they dined she told the story of those months.
"We returned to London very suddenly after you had gone away," she began. "We were to have stayed through September. But my father said that business called him back, and I noticed that he was deeply troubled."
"When did you notice that?" asked Chayne, quickly. "When did you first notice it?"
Sylvia reflected for a moment.
"The day after you had gone."