her. She was willing to lay all on love's altar--body, soul, and
spirit, and that honour of the Davenants which she had been so schooled
to keep untarnished. Her pledge to Roger, her uncle's faith in
her--all these must be tossed into the fire to make her gift complete.
But the agony in Peter's face when the mask had fallen from it had
temporarily destroyed for her all values except the value of love.

Peter took the fluttering, outstretched fingers and laid his lips
against them. Then he relinquished them slowly, lingeringly. Passion
had died out of his face. His eyes held only a grave tenderness, and
the sternly sweet expression of his mouth recalled to Nan the man as
she had first known him, before love, terrible and beautiful, had come
into their lives to destroy them.

"I should never take you, dear," he said at last. "A man doesn't hurt
the thing he loves--not in his right senses. What he'll do when the
madness is on him--only his own soul knows."

She caught his arm impetuously.

"Peter, let me come! I'm not afraid of being hurt--not if we're
together. It's only the hurt of being without you that I can't
bear. . . . Oh, I know what you're thinking"--as she read the negation
in his face--"that I should regret it, that I should mind what people
said. Dear, if I can give you happiness, things like that simply
wouldn't count. . . . Ah, believe me, Peter!"

He looked down at her with the tenderness one accords a child,
ignorantly pleading to have its way. He knew Nan's temperament--knew
that, in spite of all her courage, when the moment of exaltation had
passed not even love itself could make up for the bitterness of its
price, if bought at such a cost. He pictured her exposed to the
slights of those whose position was still unassailable, waiting
drearily at Continental watering-places till the decree absolute should
be pronounced, and finally, restored to respectability in so far as
marriage with him could make it possible, but always liable to be
unpleasantly reminded, as she went through life, that there had been a
time when she had outraged convention. It was unthinkable! It would
break her utterly.

"Even if that were all, it still wouldn't be possible," he said gently.
"You don't know what you would have to face. And I couldn't let you
face it. But it isn't all. . . . There's honour, dear, and
duty. . . ."

Her gaze met his in dreary interrogation.

"Then--then, you'll go away?" Her