-no longer by the laws of God and man, but by the fact that
she herself had destroyed his faith and belief in her.

She stepped wearily out of the car when it reached Mallow. She was
late in returning, and neither Kitty nor Penelope were visible as she
entered the big panelled hall. Probably they had already gone upstairs
to dress for dinner.

As she made her way slowly towards the staircase, absorbed in rather
bitter thoughts, a slight sound caught her ear--a sudden stir of
movement. Then, out of the dim shadows of the hall, someone came
towards her--someone who limped a little as he came.

"Nan!"

For an instant her heart seemed to stop beating. The quiet, drawling
voice was Peter's, no longer harsh with anger, nor stern with the
enforced repression of a love that was forbidden, but tender and
enfolding as it had been that moonlit night amid the ruins of King
Arthur's Castle.

"Peter! . . . Peter! . . ."

She ran blindly towards him, whispering his name.

How it had happened she neither knew nor cared--all that mattered was
that Peter was here, waiting for her! And as his arms closed round
her, and his voice uttered the one word: "Beloved!" she knew that every
barrier was down between them and that the past, with all its blunders
and effort and temptations, had been wiped out.

Presently she leaned away from him.

"Peter, I used to wonder _why_ God kept us apart. I almost lost my
faith--once."

Peter's steady, blue-grey eyes met hers.

"Beloved," he said, "I think we can see why, even now. Isn't our
love . . . which we've fought to keep pure and clean . . . been
crucified for . . . a thousand times better and finer thing than the
love we might have snatched at and taken when it wasn't ours to take?"

She smiled up at him, a tender gravity in her face. Her thoughts
slipped back to the little song which seemed to hold so strange a
symbolism of her own life. The third verse had come true at last. She
repeated it aloud, very softly:

"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."

Peter stooped and kissed her lips. There was a still, quiet passion in
his kiss, but there was something more--something deep and
intransmutable--the same unchanging troth which, he had given her at
Tintagel of love that would last "through this world into the next."

THE END