Wingarde saw him off, with the scoffing smile upon his lips. When he
returned to the drawing-room Nina was on her feet, waiting for him. She
was still unusually pale, and her eyes were very bright. She wore a
restless, startled look, as though her nerves were on the stretch.

Wingarde glanced at her.

"You had better go and lie down till dinner," he said.

Nina looked back at him. Her lips quivered a little, but when she spoke
her voice was absolutely steady. She held her head resolutely high.

"I think Archie must have forgotten to thank you," she said, "for what
you did. But I have not. Will you accept my gratitude?"

There was proud humility in her voice. But Wingarde only shrugged his
shoulders with a sneer.

"Your gratitude would have been more genuine if you had been saved a
widow instead of a wife," he said brutally.

She recoiled from him. Her eyes flashed furious indignation. She felt as
if he had struck her in the face. She spoke instantly and vehemently.
Her voice shook.

"That is a poison of your own mixing," she said. "You know it!"

"What! It isn't true?" he asked.

He drew suddenly close to her. His eyes gleamed also with the gleam of
a smouldering fire. She saw that he was moved. She believed him to be
angry. Trembling, yet scornful, she held her peace.

He gripped her wrists suddenly, bending his dark face close to hers.

"If it isn't true--" he said, and stopped.

She drew back from him with a startled movement. For an instant her eyes
challenged his. Then abruptly their fierce resistance failed. She turned
her face aside and burst into tears.

In a moment she was free. Her husband stood regarding her with a very
curious look in his eyes. He watched her as she moved slowly away from
him, fighting fiercely, desperately, to regain her self-control. He saw
her sit down, leaving almost the length of the room between them, and
lean her head upon her hand.

Then the man's arrested brutality suddenly reasserted itself, and he
strode to the door.

"Pshaw!" he exclaimed as he went. "Don't I know that you pray for a
deliverer every night of your life? And what deliverer would you have if
not death--the surest of all--in your case positively the only one
within the bounds of possibility?"

He was gone with the words, but she would not have attempted to answer
them had he stayed. Her head was bowed almost to her knees, and she sat
quite motionless, as if he had stabbed her to the heart.

Late