her five minutes before the glass, carefully bestowing those little
touches to her toilette which would add to her physical charm, and evoke
Piers's admiration to the uttermost.

He was pacing the room from end to end. The sound of his footsteps
reached her ears before the door opened, and the moment she appeared he
came towards her with outstretched arms.

"Vanna! this must end. It is unsupportable. We cannot endure it any
longer. Why can every one be happy except us? Edith Morton married in
six weeks! Good God, and we have waited five years; may wait for ever.
To hear Jean prattling of its being so wise, so sensible, and you
agreeing in a calm, even voice--it drove me wild! There are some things
a man cannot stand. I have come to the end of my tether."

Vanna stood like a statue, eyes cast down, hands clenched by her sides.
No! this was not one of the scenes to which she was accustomed; this was
something more. There was a note in Piers's voice which she had not
heard before--a note of determination, of finality. Within her soul she
heard the knell of the end.

"Vanna, you must feel for yourself that things are impossible. We must
marry. We must risk all. This farce cannot go on. We have done our
best, and we have failed. Nothing that could happen could be worse than
to go on through the years wasting our lives. We must take our risks,
and face them together. We must marry!"

To the last day of her life Vanna never ceased to marvel at her own
courage and calmness at this moment of supreme temptation. A hundred
times over she had tremblingly acknowledged to herself that if Piers
made a violent attack upon her determination she could not answer for
the result. The temptation to consent, to gain happiness at whatever
cost, would be so immense that continued resistance would be next to
impossible; but at this moment there was no feeling of temptation. The
steady, persistent effort of years finds its reward in these crises of
life--in a strength of character, a stiffening of the mental muscles,
which changes tumult into calm. Vanna ceased to tremble; she stood
motionless before her lover, oblivious of his outstretched arms, her
whole being projected into the thought of the future.

It was as if on a darkened night a sudden flash of light had been
vouchsafed, by which the landscape was revealed, with the pitfalls
yawning at her feet. A tranquil, trustful soul like Robert Gloucester
might have tak