“That was my talisman. Alargherita sent it back to me when she wrote telling me of Nesta’s death. Whenever I felt my resolution weakening, I used to take it out and have a look at it. It was always quite effective in thrusting me back into my proper place in the scheme of things—that is, outside any other woman’s life.” There was an inexpressible bitterness in his tones, and Jean drew a little nearer to him, her heart overflowing with compassion. He looked down at her, and smiled a thought ironically. “But now—you’ve beaten me.” His lips brushed her hair. “I’m glad to be beaten, belovedest... I knew, that day at Montavan, what you might come to mean to me. And I intended never to see you again, but just to take that one day for remembrance. I felt that, having made such an utter hash of things, having spoiled one woman’s life and been, indirectly, the cause of her death, I was not fit to hold another woman’s happiness in my hands.”
Jean rubbed her cheek against his shoulder.
“I’m glad you thought better of it? she observed.
“I don’t know, even now, that I’m right in letting you love me——”
“You can’t stop me,” she objected.
He smiled.
“I don’t think I would if I could—now.”
Jean leaned up and, with a slender, dictatorial finger on the side of his face, turned his head towards her.
“Quite sure?” she demanded saucily. Then, without waiting for his answer: “Blaise, I do love your chin—it’s such a nice, square, your-money-or-your-life sort of chin.”
Something light as a butterfly, warm as a woman’s lips, just brushed the feature in question.