of her experience and the charity of her dearly purchased
understanding. Terry, whom he had loved since she was a child, had
become inscrutable. But Lady Dawn---- Was it her suffering that made him
know her as he knew himself?

"I hadn't meant to intrude on you," he apologized. "I hadn't the least
idea you were here. How should I have had? You disappeared without
warning; at your father's house your address was refused me. Lady Dawn
will bear me out that, at the very moment you entered, I was assuring
her that my visit had nothing to do with you. Probably you heard."

"Nothing to do with me!" There was relief in her way of saying it. She
visibly relaxed. "Then it isn't because of me at all that you're here?"

The suppressed eagerness of her question was wounding. She wanted to
hear him state more positively that she had had nothing to do with his
visit. Whatever she had seen before they had become aware of her, had
had no power to rouse her jealousy. She could have given him no stronger
proof of how absolutely he had ceased to count. He smiled bitterly. "Not
because of you at all, Terry. The reason for my being here is strictly
private between Lady Dawn and myself. I didn't come to worry you. You
may set your mind at rest."

"Then you didn't know or even suspect----"

He laughed unhappily. "What more can I say to convince you? I haven't
the least idea what you suppose I could suspect. What business is it of
mine to suspect anything? And if I did, what license should I have to
interfere? We're not as we once were. There are no longer any
sentimental obligations that would hold us accountable to each other.
You've shown me that you consider our relation ended. In the face of
that, I should scarcely follow you into the country where, by all
accounts, you've come to escape me. It's purely a coincidence that you
find me here."

He caught Lady Dawn's eyes resting on him. They were wide and clear and
interrogating. He knew what she was remembering: that it was in this
room within the hour that he had said, "But I want her. I can't do
without her. I want no one else." Self-ridicule tempered his spirit into
sharpness. He turned again to Terry.

"Once and for all I should like to set your doubts at rest. You need
have no fear that I shall ever inconvenience you. We're bound to meet
from time to time, but I pledge you my word that I shall never refer to
the past. You're of an age to make decisions for yourself; you've
deci