But, really, he had no cause for apprehension. The tears now were streaming down her face, sobs were choking her, convulsive shudderings that shook her body in a merciless grip. Her spirit was utterly broken. No worse could happen to her now. But through all her misery, she could still think first of him. That tentative drawing away, the hand stretching out for the door, she knew the meaning of that; she saw that he had had enough--enough of her weeping, enough of her despair. Just as when, watching the fight, she had struggled against her weakness lest it should spoil his pleasure, so now she fought down the hysteria of her mind to give him ease. Very wearily she crossed the room and stood beside him, forcing back tears with lips that were trembling and contorted. It was no show of bravado, no spurious bravery, aping self-respect, taking it well, as the phrase has it. She was not brave. She felt a coward to all of life that offered. Her heart was that of a derelict--numbed, inert, no spirit left in it--just lifting its head with sluggish weariness above the body of the waves. But simply out of love for him she could not bear to see him annoyed by her suffering. "You needn't hurry to go," she said finely; "I shan't make a fool of myself--the way you think. I shan't be a drag on you--I promise you that. And if you're going to-morrow, wouldn't you stop just a little while and talk?" At any other moment the simplicity of that would have touched him; but the affection that Devenish had seen to be tiring had been snapped--a thread in a flame--when he had found her watching his actions, dogging his footsteps. His liberty--that which a man of his type most prizes when he finds it being encroached upon--had been threatened. There was no forgiveness in the heart of him for that. In the sudden freedom of his affections--just as Mrs. Durlacher had so deftly anticipated--he had let them drift--a moth to the nearest candle, a floating seed to the nearest shore--and Coralie Standish-Roe had claimed them. "Can anything be gained by talking?" he asked, quietly. "Yes--perhaps it's the last time." "But nothing can be gained by it. You'll only make yourself more miserable. What is the good of that?" "Do you think I could be more miserable?" she asked. He shrugged his shoulders.