"Isn't it odd to think," she whispered, "that in a few moments another day will begin? I feel more like Cinderella than ever--now. You have given me such a good time," her voice trembled, and he looked up and stared at her strangely. "You've almost made me in love again with life," and she was sincere in what she said. "I?" said Lingard hoarsely. "I?" "Yes, you! You don't know--how could you know?--what it's been to me, what it would have been to any woman, to have a man for a friend, to feel at last that there is someone to whom one can say everything----" He looked away from her. At all costs he must prevent himself from showing what he felt--the violent, the primitive emotion her simple, touching words had called forth. How utterly she would despise him if she knew! He swore to himself she should never know that she had made him all unwittingly traitor to the woman she loved,--the woman alas! whom they both loved. Lingard, and that was part of the punishment he already had to endure, never left off loving Jane Oglander. Jane was always, in a spiritual sense, very near to him; it was her physical self which was remote. The tiny gong behind the little clock began to strike, quick precipitate strokes. "Isn't it in a hurry?" said Athena plaintively, "in such a hurry to end the last of my happy days." Her voice broke into a sob, and Lingard, at last looking straight into her face, saw that tears were rolling down her cheeks. He gave a hoarse inarticulate cry. Athena thought he said "My God!" She was filled with a sense of intoxicating happiness and triumph. Each of the wild, broken words--words of self-abasement, self-blame, self-rebuke, which Lingard uttered, holding both her hands in his firm grasp,--meant to her what fluttering white flags of surrender mean to besiegers. With downcast eyes, with beating heart she listened while Lingard, abasing himself and exalting her, took all the blame--and shame--on himself. His words fell very sweetly and comfortingly on her ears. Athena had no wish to act treacherously by Jane. Any other man but this strange man would have had her long ago in his arms, but Lingard, though he held her hands so tightly that his grasp hurt, made no other movement towards her, not even when with a sobbing sigh she admitted--and as she did so there came across her a slight feeling of shame--that she, too, had been a traitor, an unwilling, an unwitting traitor, to Jane these last few days. At last they made a compact--how often are such compacts made, and broken?--that Jane should never, never, know the strange madness which had seized them both. Lingard spoke of leaving the next day. Nothing would be easier than to urge important business in London. But again the tears sprang to Athena's eyes.