rought him up short.

Against his will he halted. "Well?" he demanded.

"It's only this," said Nick. "You know as well as I do that I possess
the means to prevent your marriage to Muriel Roscoe, and I shall
certainly use that means unless you give her up of your own accord.
You see what it would involve, don't you? The sacrifice of your
precious honour--and not yours only."

He paused as if to allow full vent to Grange's anger, but still he did
not change his position.

"You damned cur!" said Grange, his voice hoarse with concentrated
passion.

Nick took up his tale as if he had not heard. "But, on the other hand,
if you will write and set her free now, at once--I don't care how you
do it; you can tell any likely lie that occurs to you--I on my part
will swear to you that I will give her up entirely, that I will never
plague her again, will never write to her or attempt in any way to
influence her life, unless she on her own initiative makes it quite
clear that she desires me to do so."

He ceased, and there fell a dead silence, broken only by the lashing
rain upon the windows and the long, deep roar of the sea. He seemed to
be listening to them with bent head, but in reality he heard nothing
at all. He had made the final sacrifice for the sake of the woman he
loved. To secure her happiness, her peace of mind, he had turned his
face to the desert, at last, and into it he would go, empty, beaten,
crippled, to return no more for ever.

Across the lengthening silence Grange's voice came to him. There was a
certain hesitation in it as though he were not altogether sure of his
ground.

"I am to take your word for all that?"

Nick turned swiftly round. "You can do as you choose. I have nothing
else to offer you."

Grange abandoned the point abruptly, feeling as a man who has lost his
footing in a steep place and is powerless to climb back. Perhaps even
he was vaguely conscious of something colossal hidden away behind that
baffling, wrinkled mask.

"Very well," he said, with that dogged dignity in which Englishmen
clothe themselves in the face of defeat. "Then you will take my word
to set her free."

"To-night?" said Nick.

"To-night."

There was another pause. Then Nick crossed to the door and unlocked
it.

"I will take your word," he said.

A few seconds later, when Grange had gone, he softly shut and locked
the door once more, and returned to his chair before the fire. Great
gusts of rain were being