His ring came at the front-door bell. ‘Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot,’ was ceremoniously announced by Sylvestre. The French windows stood open. With the occult sixth sense which, in lovers, supplements the ordinary ones of sight and hearing, Marjorie divined that Geoffrey walked at once to the lawn in search of the Seigneur. After a time she could hear his voice--excellent spirits Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot seemed to be in--as he made his way through the crowded outer room. She caught the laughter of Ada de Carteret, the thin gay tones of Rosie Verschoyle. A sharp cross fire of raillery was being levelled against Geoffrey on the subject of his abrupt departure. Marjorie could detect and misconstrue the coolness with which he turned this raillery aside. By and by came a new excitement. The Maltshire dandies were arriving in force, and in the general flutter which ensued upon this important crisis no single voice was longer distinguishable. Marjorie’s pulse went quicker. She knew that her time had come. Three or four seconds passed breathlessly, then a hand drew back the curtain behind which she was half concealed. Geoffrey Arbuthnot stood beside her. ‘I have kept my word. I am here to wish you and the Seigneur good-bye.’ His composed speech stirred every fibre of Marjorie’s repentant, passionate heart. ‘It is a surprise,’ Geff added, ‘to find half the Guernsey world at Tintajeux Manoir. But I hope, Miss Bartrand, you can spare me five minutes’ quiet talk?’ Marjorie, on this, had no choice but to look up at him. Tears, despite pride, despite principle, were in her eyes. ‘To say good-bye!’ she repeated, holding out her hand, then, with cheeks going from rosy-red to white, shrinking back ere he could grasp it. ‘I--I never thought you could be so cruel.’ So the girl cared something for him, after all, thought Geoffrey. She would brush a tear away to-morrow, perhaps, when those who travel by land or water were courteously alluded to by old Andros in the Litany, would regret him a little, as long as this summer’s roses lasted. She would remember him until her heart, if heart she possessed, should be touched in earnest. No more than this. It was not her time to love, poor Marjorie! And he ... must part from her as a strong man ought; must say ‘this is,’ not ‘this might have been.’ There should be neither recrimination nor bitterness. A touch of the sunburnt chiselled hand, a look into the eyes which had wounded him, as children wound, from ignorance, and then a brave and loyal farewell, this time a final one. A table on which lay books and photographs stood at hand. Geoffrey took up a photograph of the Gouliots, Sark--some glistening boulders, a fishing-net stretched on the shingle, a break of wave. How indelibly the bit of sun-etching transferred itself to his brain’s tablets! How often, in dull future hours, would those boulders, that break of wave, stand out in crisp relief before Geff’s memory?