u discovered it?" He looked hard into her face with
keen, searching eyes. "How did _you_ know that _I_ had changed?"

He had taken her a little unawares, and suddenly she felt the hot,
tell-tale blood mounting higher and higher up her face. She moved
restlessly, impatiently, as if his gaze were intolerable, and then
replied a trifle lamely, "You must have heard the English proverb,
'Lookers-on see most of the game.'"

"Ah! I wonder at what particular point you saw first?..."

"In any case it is beside the question," she declared, anxious to get
the conversation away from herself. "As I asked you on Tuesday, I ask
you again, 'What do you think of a man who marries a woman when he
does not love her?'"

"That is not the question you asked me."

"Yes it is," a trifle shortly. Diana was beginning to feel rather like
a swimmer out of his depth.

"I beg your pardon, it is not; but we will let it pass for the moment.
Granting that what you have told me is true, what do you expect me to
do?"

"Tell Meryl the truth."

"And what is the truth?" He was gazing hard at her again, and Diana
began to wish she could run away and hide. She knew that her changing
colour and averted eyes were telling him something he badly wanted to
know.

"O, you're very dense!" she cried, seeking to cover her discomfort.
"Tell her you have discovered it is all a mistake; that you do not
think she loves you better than all the world; and that you feel
yourself wedded to your work, and ... and ... that kind of thing. Of
course it won't be nice, but surely you can see it is a far _braver_
thing to do, than just to go on because you are afraid of what the
world will say?"

"And suppose Meryl wishes to hold to her promise and give herself to
her country?"

"She can still do that, only in some other way."

"And what do you think South Africa will say?"

"O, that's quite beyond me!..." with a little comical grimace, "but,
of course, at any cost, you must avert another war!..." They both
smiled, and she added more seriously, "You can announce that you
discovered in time you were not very well suited to each other, and
mutually agreed to break off the engagement."

Again he was silent for a long time, lost in thought. At last, "And
when do you think I should say this to Meryl?"

"It will not be any easier through waiting. Why not to-night?"

Again he was silent, and something in the air, some secret, veiled
magnetism, told Diana whither his t