staying at Redlands, but I don't know. And--and--Blake, he has
lost his left arm. It makes him look so queer." She gave a sudden,
uncontrollable shudder. The old dumb horror looked out of her eyes.
"I thought I shouldn't mind," she said, under her breath. "Perhaps--if
you had been there--it would have been different. As it was--as it
was--" She broke off, rising impetuously to her feet, and laying
trembling hands upon his arms. "Oh, Blake," she whispered, like a
scared child. "I feel so helpless. But you promised--you promised--you
would never let me go."

Yes, he had promised her that. He had sworn it, and, sick at heart,
he remembered that in her eyes at least he was a man of honour. It
had been in his mind to tell her the simple truth, just so far as he
himself was concerned, and thereafter to place himself at her
disposal to act exactly as she should desire. But suddenly this was an
impossibility to him. He realised it with desperate self-loathing.
She trusted him. She looked to him for protection. She leaned upon
his strength. She needed him. He could not--it almost seemed as if in
common chivalry he could not--reveal to her the contemptible weakness
which lay like a withering blight upon his whole nature. To own
himself the slave of a married woman, and that woman her closest
friend, would be to throw her utterly upon her own resources at a
time when she most needed the support and guidance of a helping
hand. Moreover, the episode was over; so at least both he and Daisy
resolutely persuaded themselves. There had been a lapse--a vain and
futile lapse--into the long-cherished idyll of their romance. It
must never recur. It never should recur. It must be covered over
and forgotten as speedily as might be. They had come to their senses
again. They were ready, not only to thrust away the evil that had
dominated them, but to ignore it utterly as though it had never been.

So, rapidly, the man reasoned with himself with the girl's hands
clasping his arm in earnest entreaty, and her eyes of innocence raised
to his.

His answer when it came was slow and soft and womanly, but, in her
ears at least, there was nothing wanting in it. She never dreamed that
he was reviling himself for a blackguard even as he uttered it.

"My dear little girl, there is nothing whatever for you to be afraid
of. You're a bit overstrung, aren't you? The man isn't living who
could take you from me."

He patted her shoulder very kindly, soothin