oth your
hands. Remember--

'He either fears his fate too much.
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch,
To gain or lose it all.'"

"I'll go!" Johnny Everard said. "I can but lose, eh? That's the worst
that can happen to me--lose. But, by Heaven! if I do lose, it is going
to--to hurt, and hurt badly. Helen dear, wish me luck!"

She put both her hands on his broad shoulders and kissed him on the
forehead. She felt to him as a mother might.

"From my heart, Johnny, I wish you luck and fortune and happiness," she
said.

Joan was at the far end of the wide, far-spreading garden. She was
seated on a bench beside a pool where grew water-lilies, and where in
the summer sunshine the dragon-flies skimmed on the placid surface of
the green water--water that now and again was broken into a ripple by
the quick twist of the tail of one of the fat old carp that lived their
humdrum, adventureless years in the quiet depths.

She sat here, chin in hand, grey eyes watching the pool, yet seeing
nothing of its beauties, and her thoughts away, away with a man who had
insulted her, had brought trouble and shame and anger to her--a man to
whom she had appealed, and had appealed in vain; a man dead to all
manhood, a man she hated--yes, hated--for often she told herself so, and
it must be true.

And then suddenly she heard the fall of a footstep on the soft turf
behind her, and, turning, looked into the face of a man whose eyes were
filled with love for her.

So for one long moment they looked at one another, and the colour rose
in the girl's cheeks, and into her eyes there came a wistful regret. For
she knew why this man was here. She knew what he had to say to her, to
ask of her, here by the green pool.

CHAPTER XXIV

"--TO GAIN, OR LOSE IT ALL"

"Take your courage in both hands" Helen had said to him, and he was
doing so; but Johnny Everard knew himself for a coward at this moment.

He felt tongue-tied, more than usually awkward, terribly and shamefully
nervous. Yet the grey eyes were on his face, and he knew that he must
speak, must put all to the hazard. And he knew also that if to-day he
lost her, it would be the biggest and the blackest sorrow of his life,
something that he would never live down, never forget.

Oh, it was worth fighting for, worth taking his courage in both hands
for, this girl with the sweet, serious face and the tender mouth, the
great, enquiring, yet trusting