f it,' said Rende.

'Parted! who parts us? It's for a night. Tomorrow!'

She breathed: 'To-morrow.'

To his hearing it craved an answer. He had none. To talk like a lover, or
like a man of honour, was to lie. Falsehood hemmed him in to the
narrowest ring that ever statue stood on, if he meant to be stone.

'That woman will be returning,' he muttered, frowning at the vacant door.
'I could lay out my whole life before your eyes, and show you I am
unchanged in my love of you since the night when Roland and I walked on
the Piazzetta . . .'

'Do not remind me; let those days lie black!' A sympathetic vision of her
maiden's tears on the night of wonderful moonlight when, as it seemed to
her now, San Giorgio stood like a dark prophet of her present abasement
and chastisement, sprang tears of a different character, and weak as she
was with her soul's fever and for want of food, she was piteously shaken.
She said with some calmness: 'It is useless to look back. I have no
reproaches but for myself. Explain nothing to me. Things that are not
comprehended by one like me are riddles I must put aside. I know where I
am: I scarcely know more. Here is madame.'

The door had not opened, and it did not open immediately.

Beauchamp had time to say, 'Believe in me.' Even that was false to his
own hearing, and in a struggle with the painful impression of insincerity
which was denied and scorned by his impulse to fling his arms round her
and have her his for ever, he found himself deferentially accepting her
brief directions concerning her boxes at the hotel, with Rosamund Culling
to witness.

She gave him her hand.

He bowed over the fingers. 'Until to-morrow, madame.'

'Adieu!' said Renee.

CHAPTER XLII

THE TWO PASSIONS

The foggy February night refreshed his head, and the business of fetching
the luggage from the hotel--a commission that necessitated the delivery
of his card and some very commanding language--kept his mind in order.
Subsequently he drove to his cousin Baskelett's Club, where he left a
short note to say the house was engaged for the night and perhaps a week
further. Concise, but sufficient: and he stated a hope to his cousin that
he would not be inconvenienced. This was courteous.

He had taken a bed at Renee's hotel, after wresting her boxes from the
vanquished hotel proprietor, and lay there, hearing the clear sound of
every little sentence of hers during the absence of Rosamund: her
'Adieu,' and