"Free!" He turned from her with a loud, harsh laugh. "Good God, how you quibble with words! I have loved you, I have given you my life--how can I be free? What have I left if you cast me off? What have _you_ left? How can you insult me with such words? How can you be so cold, so cruel? Women have no hearts. They don't know what it is to love--" The wild words flowed on in breathless torrent. Then suddenly came the collapse: he turned towards her, met the glance of her piteous eyes, and melted into remorse. "My poor Vanna, I am hurting you. Forgive me, darling! I am a brute, a selfish brute; I am half mad myself... Oh, this world! what a hell it can be! What have we done to be cursed and set aside? It is cruel--unjust. If we can never marry, why did we ever meet?" Vanna shivered. "_Why did we ever meet_?" Was it Piers who had spoken those words?--Piers, who had declared that to love her was a higher joy than to be the husband of any other woman! Once again the knell-like bell tolled in her ears. It was almost a relief when, after a few more incoherent words, Piers suddenly turned to depart. "I won't stay. I am hurting you. I'll go now, and come back when I am calm. You'll be better alone--" For the first time in five years he left her without a kiss or a caress, and Vanna sat, stunned and motionless, gazing on the ruins of her life. No one came near to interrupt her solitude. It was a rule that she should be uninterrupted when Piers was present, and his departure had apparently passed unnoticed by the household. A dense, overhanging shadow possessed her spirit, out of which one thought alone was clear. Piers was unhappy. She, who would have sheltered him from every ill, had brought upon him the keenest suffering of his life. Two hours later, when Piers himself opened the door, he found Vanna in practically the same attitude in which he had left her, crouched in the corner of the sofa. The fire had died out in the grate, and the air of the little room struck bleak and chill. The face turned towards him had the delicacy of an etching, the dark brows arched above the deep-set eyes, the finely moulded cheeks white and wan. Unlike most women, Vanna's attraction was distinct from colour; she looked her best, not her worst, in minutes of mental strain. Piers closed the door, approached her hastily, and, taking her hands in his, drew her to his side. He spoke but two words, but they were prompted by the force which is the greatest diviner of the needs of the human heart, and the whole wealth of the language could not have added to their eloquence. "_My Joy_!" he said, in that deep, full voice which Vanna had heard but once or twice before, in the great moments of their love. They wept, and clung together, and Vanna's hungry heart found comfort once more. After all, would she have been more content if Piers had _not_ rebelled? CHAPTER TWENTY ONE. PARTED.