"Ten years, twenty perhaps, I don't know. I thought once or twice before I could pay it--with the blue daffodil once, and once when I first got the cottage and things--I thought, to be sure, I could do it; it seemed a Heaven-sent way. But"--with a little glint of self-derision--"Heaven knows better than to send those sort of easy ways to the Polkingtons; they are ill-conditioned beasts who only behave when they are properly laden by fate, and not often then. Now you know all about it, so won't you say good-bye and go?" "I don't know about it and, what is more, I don't care. I am not going to let this unknown trifle, this scruple--" Just then there came the sound of voices outside; Mr. Gillat and Captain Polkington unwarily coming back before the coast was clear. "Yes," Johnny was saying, "he came to see me in town, you know--or rather you, but you were out--" "He came to see me? He"--there was no mistaking the consternation in the Captain's tone, nor his meaning either. Julia and Rawson-Clew looked at one another; both had forgotten the Captain's existence for a moment; now they were reminded, and though the reminder seemed incongruous it was perhaps opportune. "There is father," Julia said. And he nodded. One cannot make love to a man's daughter almost in his presence, when the proviso of his death is an essential to any satisfaction. Rawson-Clew went to the door. "Good-bye," he said, "for the present." "Good-bye for always," she answered. She spoke quite calmly, in much the same tone when, on the morning after the excursion to the Dunes, she had bid him good-bye and tried to face the consequences alone. She had had so many tumbles with fate that it seemed she knew how to take them now with an indifferent face. At least, nearly always, not quite--the wood block still lay before the corner in which she had crouched the marks on his coat where her tears had fallen were hardly dry. There was passion and to spare behind the indifferent face, passion that for once at least had broken through the self-mastery. He held out his hand and she put hers into it. "Good-bye," he repeated; "good-bye for the present, brave little comrade." CHAPTER XIX CAPTAIN POLKINGTON