He rose and met her in the hall, whence he could still keep his
eye on McVay's studious figure in the library.

She was dressed in her sables ready for departure.

[Illustration: SHE WAS DRESSED IN HIS SISTER'S SABLES--READY FOR
DEPARTURE]

They looked at each other a moment in silence, he appealingly, she, with
a cold blankness that seemed to say that not even a look could make her
take further notice of him as a living being.

"Have you really been thinking that I wanted to turn you out?" he said,
with directness.

"I have not been thinking about the matter at all," she answered,
turning her head a little aside from his direct gaze. "But I do think so
of course. After all why should you not wish it?"

"You think me likely to want anything that would part us--that is the
way my manner strikes you?" He was surprised to find his voice not
absolutely steady.

She favoured him with a short stare from under her lids. "You seem to
forget that I have your own word that you insisted on our going.
Possibly you have changed your mind, but I have made mine up." She made
a motion as if to pass in, and go on toward the library.

"I have changed so completely since I saw you," said Geoffrey, "that I
scarcely recognise life in this--this ecstasy. That is the only change.
Am I likely to turn you out when I have been waiting all my life for you
to come?"

It had been with her own dream, her own credulity with which she had
been fighting quite as much as with Holland, and the charm began to work
once again. She said very coolly:

"You are very kind, but as you said, we ought to be starting,--or have
you forgotten saying that?"

"Be just. You knew I was going too. You knew I urged our going
because--"

"Well, why?" Her look was still from half-shut lids, but the lines of
her mouth had softened by not a little.

"There is a danger of being snowed up here. Now I appreciate that there
would be greater danger in starting out so late. And,--and equally
desperate for me, whatever we do."

"Desperate?"

"If you only want an opportunity to think so meanly of me,--to hate me,
as your look said."

"I do not hate you."

"You are very eager to be rid of my company."

"I did not understand."

"You are going to stay?"

"Until we can go safely."

"Not longer?"

As this was a question obviously impossible to answer directly she said,
"We are under sufficiently large obligations to you already."

And Geoffrey, about to a