e flames.

"Adela," she said, "I've been a beast to you. You know--my last visit to
you. You're brave. I suppose I always felt there was something fine in
you, but I didn't know how fine you could be. All I can do in return is
this--never to tell. It isn't much, is it?"

"It's quite enough, Beryl."

"There isn't anything else I can do, is there?"

Her eyes were asking a question. Lady Sellingworth met them calmly,
earnestly. She knew what the girl was thinking at that moment. She was
thinking of Alick Craven.

"No, there isn't anything else."

"Are you quite sure, Adela? I owe you a great deal. I may forget it.
One never knows. And I suppose I'm horribly selfish. But if I make you
a promise now I'll keep it. If you want me to promise anything, tell me
now."

"But I don't want anything from you," said Lady Sellingworth.

She said it very quietly, without emotion. There was even a coldness in
her voice.

The great effort she had just made seemed to have changed her. By making
it she felt as if, unwittingly, she had built up an insurmountable
barrier between herself and youth. She had not know, perhaps, what she
was doing, but now, suddenly, she knew.

_I grow too old a comrade, let us part. Pass thou away!_

The words ran in her mind. How often she had though of them! How often
she had struggled with that wild heart which God had given her, which
in a way she clung to desperately, and yet which, as she had long known,
she ought to give up. She was too old a comrade for that wild heart, and
now surely she was saying farewell to it--this time a final farewell.
But she had felt, had really felt as if in her very entrails, for a
moment the appeal of youth. And she could never forget that, and, having
responded, she knew that she could never struggle against youth again.

Beryl had conquered her without knowing it.

CHAPTER VII

The winter night was dark when Miss Van Tuyn stood in the hall of Lady
Sellingworth's house waiting for the footman to find a taxicab for her.
A big fire was burning on the hearth; the old-fashioned hooded chair
stood beside it; and presently, as no taxicab came, she went to the
chair and sat down in it. She felt very tired. Her whole body seemed to
have been weakened by what she had just been through. But her mind was
charged with intense vitality. The thoughts galloped through it, and
they were dark as the night. The cold air of winter stole in through
the doorway of the hall. S