Thus it happened that she entered Richmond Park by Sheen Gate just as Vane, physically weary yet still mentally sleepless, was coming out of it.
During his night's vigil he had nerved himself, as he thought, to meet every imaginable trial but this one—this vision of his well-beloved, not waiting for him, but coming to him fresh and radiant in her young beauty, delightful and desirable, tempting almost beyond the powers of human resistance, and his, too, his own sweetheart, pledged to him ever since that memorable afternoon when he had fought for her and won her behind the wheelhouse in the midst of the Indian Ocean.
When her wonder had given way to complete recognition Enid dismounted and waited, naturally expecting that he would greet her; but he stood silent, looking at her as though he were trying to find some words of salutation.
"Well, Vane," she said at last, "I suppose we may shake hands. I did not expect to see you here. Cannot you look a little more cheerful? What is the matter? You look as if you hadn't been home all night."
He took her hand mechanically, and, as he held it and looked down into the sweet upturned face with a bright flush on the cheeks and the dawning of an angry light in the gentle eyes, he felt an almost irresistible desire to take her in his arms just as he had done at their last meeting and kiss into silence the tempting lips which had just shaped those almost scornfully spoken words.
It dawned upon her in the same moment that he was looking as she had never seen him look before. His face was perfectly bloodless. The features were hard-set and deep-lined. There were furrows in his forehead and shadows under his eyes. When she had last seen his face it was that of a boy of twenty, full of health and strength, and without a care on his mind. Now it was the face of a man of thirty, a man who had lived and sinned and sorrowed.
In that instant her mood and her voice changed, and she said:
"Vane, dear, what is it? Why don't you speak to me? Are you ill?"
He took her bicycle from her, and, turning, walked with her back into the park. After a few moments' silence he replied in a voice which seemed horribly strange to her: