He thrust the thought of Athena violently from him; and with the muttered words, "Can't you understand? I love you--I want you, Jane----" he turned and gathered the woman sitting so stilly by his side into his arms. She gave a stifled cry of surprise; and then, as he kissed her fiercely once, twice, and then again, there broke from her a low, bitter sigh--the sigh of a woman who feels herself debased by the caresses for which she has longed, of which she has been starved. To Jane Oglander a kiss, so light, so willing a loan on the part of many women, was so intimate a gift as to be the forerunner of complete surrender. And to-night each of Hew Lingard's kisses was to her a profaned sacrament. Not so had they kissed on that day in London. Now his kisses told her, as no words could have done, of a divided allegiance. She lay unresponsive, trembling in his arms, her eyes full of a wild, piteous questioning.... With a sudden sense of self-loathing and shame he released her from his arms. "Well?" he said sullenly. "Well, Jane?" but he knew what her answer would and must be. "I can't do what you wish, Hew. I don't think that either of us would be happy now--if we did that." She spoke in a quiet, restrained voice. She was too miserable, too deeply humiliated, for tears. Together they walked out of the summer house and retraced their steps along the ridge. "As I cannot do what you wish, would you like me to end our engagement?" He turned on her fiercely. "I did not think," he cried, "that there lived a woman in the world who could be as cruel as you have been to me to-night!" "I did not mean to be cruel," she said mournfully. "Unless you wish to drive me to the devil, don't speak like that again," he said violently. "Promise me, I mean, that you won't think of breaking our engagement." She made no answer, and a few moments later in a gentler tone he asked, "Can't you understand, Jane?" She said humbly, "I try to understand." A great and a healing flood of tenderness filled her heart, and as if the spiritual tie between them was indeed of so close a nature that Lingard felt her softening for the first time put his hand in hers. "Jane," he said huskily, "forgive me. Try to forget to-night." So they walked in silence, hand in hand, through the solitary lane and the now lighted streets of Redyford, uncaring of the few passers-by. But when they came to the park gates Lingard withdrew his hand from hers, and at the door of the Garden Room he left her. "I won't come in yet," he said abruptly, and turning on his heel he disappeared into the night. * * * * *