were spoken. She felt he must
inevitably suspect her of a prying curiosity.

"I'm lucky at cards," he replied quietly.

There was something in his voice that appealed to Nan's quick, warm
sympathies.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she said, rather tremulously. "Perhaps, some day,
the other kind of luck will come, too."

"That's out of the question"--harshly.

"Do you know a little poem called 'Empty Hands'?" she asked. "I set it
to music one day because I liked the words so much. Listen."

In a low voice, a trifle shaken by reason of the sudden tensity which had
crept into the atmosphere, she repeated the brief lyric:

"But sometimes God on His great white Throne
Looks down from the Heaven above,
And lays in the hands that are empty
The tremulous Star of Love."

As she spoke the last verse Nan's voice took on a tender, instinctive
note of consolation. Had she been looking she would have seen Peter
Mallory's hand clench itself as though to crush down some sudden, urgent
motion. But she was gazing straight in front of her into the softly lit
radiance of the car.

"Only sometimes there isn't any star, and your hands would be
'outstretched in vain,' as the song says," he commented.

"Oh, I hope not!" cried Nan. "Try to believe they wouldn't be!"

Mallory uttered a short laugh.

"I'm afraid it's no case for 'believing.' It's hard fact."

Nan remained silent. There was an undertone so bitter in his voice that
she felt as though her poor little efforts at consolation were utterly
trivial and futile to meet whatever tragedy lay behind the man's curt
speech. It seemed as though he read her thought, for he turned to her
quickly with that charming smile of his.

"You'd make a topping pal," he said. And Nan knew that in some
indefinable way she had comforted him.

They drove on in silence for some time and when, later on, they began to
talk again it was on ordinary commonplace topics, by mutual consent
avoiding any by-way that might lead them back to individual matters. The
depths which had been momentarily stirred settled down once more into
misleading tranquillity.

In due course they arrived at Abbencombe, and the car purred up to the
station, where the Chattertons' limousine, sent to meet Nan, still waited
for her. The transit from one car to the other was quickly effected, and
Peter Mallory stood bareheaded at the door of the limousine.

"Good-bye," he said. "And thank you, little pal.