He straightened himself with a gesture of exasperation. "You are wasting yourself over a myth, an illusion. On my soul, Isabel, what a wicked waste it is! Have you forgotten the days when you and I roamed over the world together? Have you forgotten Egypt and all we did there? Life was worth having then." "Ah! I thought so." She met his look with eyes that did not seem to see him. "We were children then, Eustace," she said, "children playing on the sands. But the great tide caught us. You breasted the waves, but I was broken and thrown aside. I could never play on the sands again. I can only lie and wait for the tide to come again and float me away." He clenched his hands. "Do you think I would let you go--like that?" he said. "It is the only kindness you can do me," she answered in her low voice of pleading. He swung round to go. "I curse the day," he said very bitterly, "that you ever met Basil Everard! I curse his memory!" She flinched at the words as if they had been a blow. Her face turned suddenly grey. She clasped her hands very tightly together, saying no word. He went to the door and paused, his back towards her. "I came in," he said then, "to tell you that the de Vignes have offered to put us up at their place for the wedding. And I have accepted." He waited for some rejoinder but she made none. It was as if she had not heard. Her eyes had the impotent, stricken look of one who has searched dim distances for some beloved object--and searched in vain. He did not glance round. His temper was on edge. With a fierce movement he pulled open the door and departed. And behind him like a veil there fell the silence of a great despair. CHAPTER IV THE NEW HOME A small figure was already standing outside the station when the car Sir Eustace drove whirled round the corner of the station yard. He was greeted by the waving of a vigorous hand, as he dashed up, grinding on the brakes in the last moment as was his impetuous custom. Everyone knew him from afar by his driving, and the village children were wont to scatter like rabbits at his approach. Dinah however stood her ground with a confidence which his wild performance hardly justified, and the moment he alighted sprang to meet him with the eagerness of a child escaped from school. "Oh, Eustace, it is fun coming here! I was so horribly afraid something would stop me just at the last. But everything has turned out all right, and we are going to have ever such a fine wedding with crowds and crowds of people. Did you know Isabel wrote and said she would give me my wedding dress? Isn't it dear of her? How is she now?" "Where is your luggage?" said Eustace. She pointed to a diminutive dress-basket behind her. "That's all there is. I'm not to stay more than a week as the time is getting so short I don't feel as if I shall ever be ready as it is. I've never been so rushed before. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be almost better to put it off a few weeks."