‘She was neither false nor true,’ he answered; ‘I had no place at all in her heart. My own best friend’--and here Geff’s voice sank, each word of his avowal seemed wrung from him with pain--‘became, unconsciously, my rival.’ ‘Your best friend,’ stammered Marjorie, upon whom a first flicker of light was beginning to dawn. ‘Best, then, and I hope for ever--just as she whom he married will, I know, be my ideal of all sweet and womanly qualities till I die. Although I lost her,’ exclaimed Geff Arbuthnot, ‘I owe her everything! It is using a commonplace to say that I would at any hour start to the other side of the world, if by so starting I could confer on her the smallest service. But it is the truth.’ He was a man, ordinarily, of demeanour so reticent, of emotions so controlled, that this little outburst struck on Marjorie Bartrand with double force. Alas! there could not be room for another instant’s doubt. She recalled the morning when she had lectured her tutor on his frivolity, she remembered his embarrassment when she spoke of Dinah as his wife--his absence of mind, his pallor. The story of his past life was laid open, a clear page, for her to read. The confession of her engagement to Major Tredennis had met with an over-full equivalent. ‘At last, then,’ she murmured, ‘I have got to the truth of things. It might have been juster if I had not been deceived so long.’ ‘Will you hear me out to the end?’ There was a ring of command rather than of pleading in Geoffrey’s tone. ‘Four years ago it was my fate, I can never say my misfortune, to come across a girl whom it was madness for me to love. I lost. I suffered. But many a man has met with a like overthrow, and got firmly to his feet in time. I am very firm on my feet,’ said Geff Arbuthnot. ‘I have grown young again in knowing you. If you had chosen to become my wife, I could have loved you well. Yes, I do love you--too well! Now, when it seems we are like bidding good-bye for ever.’ And Geoffrey rested his hands for an instant upon the girl’s graceful down-bent head. ‘And the dream is over--over.’ She repeated the words huskily, not so much thinking of Geff as seeking to bring home to herself the extremity of her own pain. ‘We are to be nothing to each other from this hour forth, not even friends.’ Geoffrey Arbuthnot walked a few steps away. The movement was prompted by a definite and conscious weakness. This saying good-bye for ever was no easy thing, he found, so long as his hand rested upon the silken hair, so long as the slender figure palpitated close to him, the heliotrope sent its odour to his brain from Marjorie’s breast. ‘The dream is over, because you discovered it to be a dream. You must acknowledge, Miss Bartrand, that you have taken the matter wholly out of my keeping.’