aughter's proud and somewhat impetuous temperament, instinctively
shrank from making a suggestion which she would have had very good
grounds for rejecting, more especially as she had already given such a
very decided opinion as to Vane's scruples.

As for Enid herself, she honestly thought so little of these same
scruples that she felt inclined to accuse Vane of a Quixotism which,
from her point of view at least, was entirely unwarrantable. It was,
therefore, quite impossible for her to first suggest that they should
meet after a parting during which they might have unconsciously reached
what was to be the crisis of both their lives.

The result was that the thought remained unspoken, and Enid, after
spending the evening in vexed and anxious uncertainty, went to bed; and
then, as soon as she felt that she was absolutely safe in her solitude,
discussed the whole matter over again with herself, and wound the
discussion up with a good hearty cry, after which she fell into the
dreamless slumber of the healthy and innocent.

When she woke very early the next morning, or, rather, while she was on
that borderland between sleeping and waking where the mind works with
such strange rapidity, she reviewed the whole of the circumstances, and
came to the conclusion that she was being very badly treated. Vane knew
perfectly well that she was coming back yesterday afternoon, and
therefore he had no right to let these absurd scruples of his prevent
him from performing the duties of a lover and meeting her at the
station. But, even granted that something else had made it impossible
for him to do so, there was absolutely no excuse for his remaining away
the whole afternoon and evening when he must have known how welcome a
visit would have been.

Meanwhile Vane had been doing the very last thing that she would have
imagined him doing.

After his fateful conversation with his father he had left the house in
Warwick Gardens to wander he knew and cared not whither. His thoughts
were more than sufficient companionship for him, and, heeding neither
time nor distance, he walked as he might have walked in a dream, along
the main road through Hammersmith and Turnham Green and Kew, and so
through Richmond Hill till he had climbed the hill and stopped for a
brief moment of desperate debate before the door of the saloon bar of
the "Star and Garter." The better impulse conquered the worse, and he
entered the park, and, seating himself on one of