for her once!' she cried. 'You'll care about her again. She
is beautiful and brilliant--_every_thing. I've heard she could win any
man----'

He pushed the girl from him. 'She's bewitched you!' He was halfway to
the door.

'Geoffrey, Geoffrey, you aren't going away like that? This isn't _the
end_?'

The face he turned back upon her was dark and hesitating. 'I suppose if
she refused me, you'd----'

'She won't refuse you.'

'She did once.'

'She didn't refuse to marry you.'

As she passed him on the way to her sitting-room he caught her by the
arm.

'Stop!' he said, glancing about like one hunting desperately for a means
of gaining a few minutes. 'Lady John is waiting all this time at my
house for the car to go back with a message.'

'_That's_ not a matter of life and death!' she said, with all the
impatience of the young at that tyranny of little things which seems to
hold its unrelenting sway, though the battlements of righteousness are
rocking, and the tall towers of love are shaken to the nethermost
foundation-stones.

'No, it's not a matter of life and death,' Stonor said quietly. 'All the
same, I'll go down and give the order.'

'Very well.' Of her own accord this time she stopped on her way to that
other door, behind which was the Past and the Future incarnate in one
woman. 'I'll wait,' said Jean. She went to the table. Sitting there with
her face turned from him, she said, quite low, 'You'll come back, if
you're the man I pray you are.'

Her self-control seemed all at once to fail. She leaned her elbows on
the table and broke into a flood of silent tears, with face hidden in
her hands.

He came swiftly back, and bent over her a moved, adoring face.

'Dearest of all the world,' he began, in that beautiful voice of his.

His arms were closing round her, when the door on the left was softly
opened. Vida Levering stood on the threshold.

CHAPTER XVIII

She drew back as soon as she saw him, but Stonor had looked round. His
face darkened as he stood there an instant, silently challenging her.
Not a word spoken by either of them, no sound but the faint, muffled
sobbing of the girl, who sat with hidden face. With a look of speechless
anger, the man went out and shut the doors behind him. Not seeing, only
hearing that he had gone, Jean threw her arms out across the table in an
abandonment of grief. The other woman laid on a chair the hat and cloak
that she was carrying. Then she went slowly a