never shall."

"Why not?"

"Because I am a gambler," she declared; "because to me it would mean
risking everything. And I have seen no man in the whole world strong
enough and big enough for that. You are my very dear friend, Arnold,
and you are feeling very sentimental, and your head is turned just a
little, but after all you are only a boy. The taste of life is not
yet between your teeth."

He leaned closer towards her. She put his arm gently away, shaking
her head all the time.

"Do not think that I am a prude," she said. "You can kiss me if you
like, and yet I would very much rather that you did not. I do not
know why. I like you well enough, and certainly it is not from any
sense of right or wrong. I am like Andrea in that way. I make my own
laws. To-night I do not wish you to kiss me."

She was looking up at him, her eyes filled with a curious light, her
lips slightly parted. She was so close that the perfume in which her
clothes had lain, faint though it was, almost maddened him.

"I don't think that you have a heart at all!" he exclaimed,
hoarsely.

"It is the old selfish cry, that," she answered. "Please do not be
foolish, Arnold. Do not be like those silly boys who only plague
one. With you and me, things are more serious."

The car came to a standstill before the portals of Pelham Lodge.
Arnold held her fingers for a moment or two after he had rung the
bell. Then he turned away. She called him back.

"Come in with me for a moment," she murmured. "To-night I am afraid.
Mr. Weatherley will be in bed. Come in and sit with me for a little
time until my courage returns."

He followed her into the house. There seemed to Arnold to be a
curious silence everywhere. She looked in at several rooms and
nodded.

"Mr. Weatherley has gone to bed," she announced. "Come into my
sitting-room. We will stay there for five minutes, at least."

She led the way across the hall towards the little room into which
she had taken Arnold on his first visit. She tried the door and came
to a sudden standstill, shook the handle, and looked up at Arnold in
amazement.

"It seems as though it were locked," she remarked. "It's my own
sitting-room. No one else is allowed to enter it. Groves!"

She turned round. The butler had hastened to her side.

"What is the meaning of this?" she asked. "My sitting-room is locked
on the inside."

The man tried the handle incredulously. He, too, was dumbfounded.

"Where is your master?"