She let herself rest for a moment in his arms; clinging to him with something in her touch which he had never felt before; looking up into his face as her head lay back against his shoulder with a strange, tremulous, tender light quivering on every feature, shaken from head to foot by little tremulous, tearless sobs--the sobs of utter relief and peace. Then she disengaged herself gently, and drew herself away, something of that first ecstasy dying out of her face to leave it soft and happy beyond all words. That strange light still shone in her eyes, and, as she moved, one thin hand retained its clinging hold on his arm, as though some instinct of dependence influenced her involuntarily. She was dressed, not as the other girls had been, in a light summer jacket, but in a long cloak, and as she drew it about her with the other hand, the softest touch of colour came into her white cheek. “My dear!” she said softly. “My dear!” And Julian whispered hoarsely as he had whispered again and again: “Clemmie! Clemmie!” He made no attempt to take her in his arms again. Even the gesture with which he laid his hand upon those clinging fingers on his sleeve was diffident and almost tremulous; tender and reverent as no gesture of his had ever been in all his life before. He could find no words. In her presence everything--all the triumph, all that had seemed to him the necessities and realities of life--seemed to have fallen away from him. He was nothing. He had nothing! He could say nothing to her. There was a silence; silence which for Clemence as her fingers closed round his, and that soft colour came and went in her cheeks, breathed an ineffable content; silence which for Julian held the blackest depths of self-revelation and self-contempt. It was broken at last by Clemence. “Is it done, dear?” she said gently. Julian’s hand turned cold in hers, and his eyes fell away from her face. “Not--not yet, Clemmie!” he faltered wretchedly. “I--I came to tell you--to tell you that----” “That you are going to do it? That you are going to do it? My dear, my dear, you mean that? Oh, you mean that, don’t you?” She had not raised her voice or changed her pose, but that touch upon his arm had become a close, convulsive grip, and even the clutch of the worn, blanched hand upon her cloak witnessed to the agony of supplication with which every nerve was strained and quivering. Her low voice thrilled and vibrated with it; her white face, to which his first words had brought a look of heart-sick disappointment, was an embodied prayer. He could not answer on the instant; it cut him like a lash; and she went on rapidly, her low, beseeching voice breaking and trembling with the intense feeling that flickered on her face like a light.