career."

"No," he protested.

"But I am thinking that it would," she replied, steadily, "and I do not
believe that I should give much thought to it, if I really loved you. I
am thinking of something else, too--" and she spoke more boldly,
choosing her words with care--"of a plan which before you came I had
formed, of a task which before you came I had set myself to do. I am
still thinking of it, still feeling that I ought to go on with it. I do
not think that I should feel that if I loved. I think nothing else would
count at all except that I loved. So you are still my friend, and I
cannot go with you."

Chayne looked at her for a moment sadly, with a mist before his eyes.

"I leave you to much unhappiness," he said, "and I hate the
thought of it."

"Not quite so much now as before you came," she answered. "I am proud,
you know, that you asked me," and putting her troubles aside, she smiled
at him bravely, as though it was he who needed comforting. "Good-by! Let
me hear of you through your success."

So again they said good-by at the time of sunset. Chayne mounted into
the landau and drove back along the road to Weymouth. "So that's the
end," said Sylvia. She opened the door and passed again into the garden.
Through the window of the library she saw her father and Walter Hine,
watching, it seemed, for her appearance. It was borne in upon her
suddenly that she could not meet them or speak with them, and she ran
very quickly round the house to the front door, and escaped unaccosted
to her room.

In the library Hine turned to Garratt Skinner with one of his rare
flashes of shrewdness.

"She didn't want to meet us," he said, jealously. "Do you think she
cares for him?"

"I think," replied Garratt Skinner with a smile, "that Captain Chayne
will not trouble us with his company again."

CHAPTER XIV

AN OLD PASSION BETRAYS A NEW SECRET

Garratt Skinner, however, was wrong. He was not aware of the great
revolution which had taken place in Chayne; and he misjudged his
tenacity. Chayne, like many another man, had mapped out his life only to
find that events would happen in a succession different to that which he
had ordained. He had arranged to devote his youth and the earlier part of
his manhood entirely to his career, if the career were not brought to a
premature end in the Alps. That possibility he had always foreseen. He
took his risks with full knowledge, setting the gain against them, and
counting t