There is only one thing to be
done, and it has fallen to me to see it through, though it would be
easier for me to die!"

He broke off. There was strangled passion in his voice. Abruptly he
turned his back upon her, and began to pace up and down. Again there
fell a long pause. The music and the tramp of dancing feet below rose up
in his ears like a shout of mockery. He was fighting the hardest battle
of his life, fighting single-handed and grievously wounded for a victory
that would cripple him for the rest of his days.

Suddenly he stood still and looked at her, though she had not moved,
unless her head with its silvery hair were bowed a little lower than
before. For a single instant he hesitated, then strode impulsively to
her, and knelt down by her side.

"God help us both!" he said hoarsely.

His hands were on her shoulders. He drew her to him, taking the bowed
head upon his breast. And so, silently, he held her. When she looked up
at last, he knew that the bitter triumph was his. Her face was deathly,
but her eyes were steadfast. She drew herself very gently out of his
hold.

"I do not think," she said, "that there is anyone else in the world who
could have done for me what you have done tonight." She paused a moment
looking straight into his eyes, then laid her hands in his without a
quiver. "Years ago," she said, "you saved my life. Tonight--you have
saved something infinitely more precious than that. And I--I am
grateful to you. I will do--whatever you think right."

It was a free surrender, but it wrung his heart to accept it. Even in
that moment of tragedy there was to him something of that sublime
courage with which she had faced the tumult of a stormy sea with him
five years before. And very poignantly it came home to him that he was
there to destroy and not to deliver. Like a wave of evil, it rushed upon
him, overwhelming him.

He could not trust himself to speak. The wild words that ran in his
brain were such as he could not utter. And so he only bent his head once
more over the hands that lay so trustingly in his, and with great
reverence he kissed them.

VIII

It was on a cold, dark evening two days later that Major Coningsby
returned from the first run of the year, and tramped, mud-splashed and
stiff from hard riding, into his gloomy house. A gust of rain blew
swirling after him, and he turned, swearing, and shut the great door
with a bang. It had not been a good day for sport. The ground