rson, which had a moment before seemed
incapable of any expression beyond lethargic fatigue, underwent so
sudden a transformation that the ingenue interrupted her weeping to
watch it. There was a prefatory blankness of sheer amazement followed
by an upleaping of latent fires into the eyes; fires that held hints of
revived hopes and suppressed yearnings. Within the moment this fitful
light died again into a pained gravity. What was the use of reopening
the perilous issues?

Of course he wanted to see her. He wanted to see her so intensely that
to do so would be both foolish and dangerous. He had spent these years
drilling himself into a discipline which should enable him to think of
Conscience as someone outside his personal world. To see her now would
be to set into eruption a volcano which he had meant that the years
should render extinct. No one but himself could know by what a doubtful
margin he had won his fight that day on the P. and O. steamer. Could he
do it again with the sight of her in his eyes and the sound of her voice
in his ears?

Yet, how could he without utter gracelessness decline?

The fashion of the invitation, communicated through the husband, proved
its motive. Conscience wished to show him that she could receive
cordially and with no misgivings as to the outcome. She probably wished
also to assure him that from all possible charges, he was now absolved.
These motives were all gracious, but, he admitted with a queer smile of
suffering, their result was rather akin to cruelty. He decided that he
must meet her in the same spirit and allow her to feel that, through
her, his life had suffered no permanent scar. It was palpably a case for
gentlemanly lying.

Though Eben's note to Farquaharson had said that Conscience requested
him to extend the invitation, he had not yet mentioned to her the
circumstance of its sending. He wished to study an unwarned face when
she met Farquaharson. If she attempted to flash a warning of any sort;
if her words cleverly shaped themselves into forms of private meaning
for the lover: he would be there to note and correlate.

During the morning's shopping Conscience had not seemed, to his narrow
watching, impatient to separate from him, but shortly after noon she
suggested, as though blaming herself for her previous remissness, "But
you had business with your banker, didn't you? Doesn't that have to be
seen to early?"

"There's an abundance of time," he hastened to ass