"I want Nan to come and stay with me for a time," pursued Kitty steadily, on the principle of striking while the iron is hot. "Later on I'll bring her down to Mallow, and later still we can talk about the wedding. You'll have to wait some months, Roger."
He assented, and Nan, realising that it was his mother in him, for the moment uppermost, making these concessions to convention, felt conscious of a wild hysterical desire to burst out laughing. She made a desperate effort to control herself.
The room seemed to be growing very dark. Far away in the sky—no, it must be the ceiling—she could see the electric lights burning ever more and more dimly as the waves of darkness surged round her, rising higher and higher.
"But there's honour, dear, and duty. . . ." Peter's words floated up to her on the shadowy billows which swayed towards her.
"Honour! Duty!"
There was a curious singing in her head. It sounded like the throb of a myriad engines, rhythmically repeating again and again:
"Honour! Duty! Honour! Duty!"
The words grew fainter, vaguer, trailing off into a regular pulsation that beat against her ears.
"Honour!" She thought she said it very loudly.
But all that Kitty and Roger heard was a little moan as Nan slipped to the ground in a dead faint.