'Why is she intriguing to get hold of a man that ten years ago she flatly refused to see or hold any communication with?' 'Intriguing to get hold of? She hasn't mentioned you!' 'What! Then how, in the name of Heaven, do you know--she wants--what you ask?' 'There can't be any doubt about that,' said the girl, firmly. With all his tenderness for her, so little still did he understand what she was going through, that he plainly thought all her pain had come of knowing that this other page was in his life--he had no glimpse of the girl's passionate need to think of that same long-turned-over page as unmarred by the darker blot. 'You absurd, ridiculous child!' With immense relief he dropped into the nearest chair. 'Then all this is just your own unaided invention. Well, I could thank God!' He passed his handkerchief over his face. 'For what are you thanking God?' He sat there obviously thinking out his plan of action. 'Suppose--I'm not going to risk it--but _suppose_----' He looked up, and at the sight of Jean's face he rose with an expression strangely gentle. The rather hard eyes were softened in a sudden mist. 'Whether _I_ deserve to suffer or not, it's quite certain _you_ don't. Don't cry, dear one. It never was the real thing. I had to wait till I knew you before I understood.' Her own eyes were brimming as she lifted them in a passion of gratitude to his face. 'Oh! is that true? Loving you has made things clear to me I didn't dream of before. If I could think that because of me you were able to do this----' 'You go back to that?' He seized her by the shoulders, and said hoarsely, 'Look here! Do you seriously ask me to give up the girl I love--to go and offer to marry a woman that even to think of----' 'You cared for her once!' she cried. 'You'll care about her again. She is beautiful and brilliant--_every_thing. I've heard she could win any man----' He pushed the girl from him. 'She's bewitched you!' He was halfway to the door. 'Geoffrey, Geoffrey, you aren't going away like that? This isn't _the end_?' The face he turned back upon her was dark and hesitating. 'I suppose if she refused me, you'd----' 'She won't refuse you.' 'She did once.' 'She didn't refuse to marry you.' As she passed him on the way to her sitting-room he caught her by the arm. 'Stop!' he said, glancing about like one hunting desperately for a means of gaining a few minutes. 'Lady John is waiting all this time at my house for the car to go back with a message.' '_That's_ not a matter of life and death!' she said, with all the impatience of the young at that tyranny of little things which seems to hold its unrelenting sway, though the battlements of righteousness are rocking, and the tall towers of love are shaken to the nethermost foundation-stones. 'No, it's not a matter of life and death,' Stonor said quietly. 'All the same, I'll go down and give the order.'