Vane threw the end of his cigarette in the fire and laughed. "There's always a catch somewhere, isn't there, Mr. Sutton? . . . . I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to excuse my changing; I've only got this khaki with me." Vane was standing in front of the big open hearth in the hall when Joan came down for dinner. It was the first time he had seen her in an evening dress, and as she came slowly towards him from the foot of the stairs his hands clenched behind his back, and he set his teeth. In her simple black evening frock she was lovely to the point of making any man's senses swim dizzily. And when the man happened to be in love with her, and knew, moreover, that she was in love with him, it was not to be wondered at that he put both hands to his head, with a sudden almost despairing movement. The girl, as she reached him, saw the gesture, and her eyes grew very soft. Its interpretation was not hard to discover, even if she had not had the grim, fixed look on his face to guide her; and in an instant it swept away the resolve she had made in her room to treat him coldly. In a flash of clear self-analysis just as she reached him, she recognised the futility of any such resolve. It was with that recognition of her weakness that fear came. . . . All her carefully thought out plans seemed to be crumbling away like a house of cards; all that she wanted was to be in his arms . . . to be kissed. . . . And yet she knew that that way lay folly. . . . "Why have you come?" she said very low. "It wasn't playing the game after what I wrote you. . . ." Vane looked at her in silence for a moment and then he laughed. "Are you really going to talk to me, Joan, about such a thing as playing the game?" She stood beside him with her hands stretched out towards the blazing logs. "You know how utterly weak it makes me--being near you. . . . You're just trading on it." "Well," said Vane fiercely, "is there any man who is a man who wouldn't under the circumstances?" "And yet," she said, turning and facing him gravely, "you know what is at stake for me." Her voice began to quiver. "You're playing with sex . . . . sex . . . . sex, and it's the most powerful weapon in the world. But its effects are the most transitory." "You lie, Joan, and you know it," Vane gripped her arm. "It's not the most transitory." "It is," she cried stamping her foot, "it is. Against it on the other side of the balance lie the happiness of my father and brother--Blandford--things that last. . . ." "But what of your own happiness?" he asked grimly. "Why do you think I shouldn't be happy?" she cried. "I've told you that it's a purely business arrangement. Henry is very nice and kind, and all that I'll be missing is a few months of the thing they call Love. . . ."