"I have never told you anything that was not the truth," he said; "I will not begin now. I might have told you that I was here by chance, for change of air, or for the golf. Neither of these things would have been true. I am here because Deringham village is only a mile or two from Deringham Hall." She drew a little closer to him. The jingling of harness, as her horses tossed their heads impatiently, reminded her of the close proximity of the servants. "What do you want of me?" she asked hoarsely. He looked at her in mild reproach, a good-humoured smile at the corner of his lips; yet after all was it good humour or some curious outward reflection of the working of his secret thoughts? When he spoke the reproach, at any rate, was manifest. "Want of you! You talk as though I were a blackmailer, or something equally obnoxious. Is that quite fair, Constance?" She evaded the reproach; perhaps she was not conscious of it. It was the truth she wanted. "You had some end in coming here," she persisted. "What is it? I cannot conceive anything in the world you have to gain by coming to see me. We have left the world and society; we live buried. Whatever fresh schemes you may be planning, there is no way in which we could help you. You are richer, stronger, more powerful than we. I can think," she added, "of only one thing which may have brought you." "And that?" he asked deliberately. She looked at him with a certain tremulous wistfulness in her eyes, and with softening face. "It may be," she said, "that as you grow older you have grown kinder; you may have thought of my great desire, and you were always generous, Victor, you may have come to grant it!" The slightest possible change passed over his face as his Christian name slipped from her lips. The firm lines about his mouth certainly relaxed, his dark eyes gleamed for a moment with a kindlier light. Perhaps at that minute for both of them came a sudden lifting of the curtain, a lingering backward glance into the world of their youth, passionate, beautiful, seductive. There were memories there which still seemed set to music--memories which pierced even the armour of his equanimity. Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at him. With a quick gesture she laid her hand upon his. "Believe me, Victor," she said, "I have always thought of you kindly; you have suffered terribly for my sake, and your silence was magnificent. I have never forgotten it." His face clouded over, her impulsive words had been after all ill chosen, she had touched a sore point! There was something in these memories distasteful to him. They recalled the one time in his life when he had been worsted by another man. His cynicism returned. "I am afraid," he said, "that the years, which have made so little change in your appearance, have made you a sentimentalist. I can assure you that these old memories seldom trouble me."