Silence enveloped them while Philip helped her with her wraps, and saw her seated in an armchair before the fire. Despite the color that the cold drive had brought into her cheeks, her features were still pinched and pale. Many weeks would be required, a summer perhaps, to restore her to what she had been before her terrible experience. And yet she seemed to him more beautiful than ever. Watching her furtively and anxiously, he endured a raging conflict of emotions, recalling with a poignant feeling of shame all that he had said to her in that room and elsewhere, in return for what she had done for him. An impulse seized him to rush to the door and lock it, to turn on her savagely, forbidding her to leave him as he had forbidden her to come to him. For all the proofs he had had of her love and devotion seemed inadequate to quiet the doubts he now confessed. He found speech strangely difficult; he went out of the room twice to give quite unnecessary instructions to Jim; and returned to busy himself arranging things in the room that obviously needed no arranging. "Thursby was good enough to go somewhere to-day, and let us have the cottage," he managed to say at length. "Do you mind if we are quite alone?" "Philip!" she responded reproachfully. "How you talk!" "Then we'll have tea." He called the Chinaman, who brought in the steaming teapot, the hot milk, and the buttered toast. Marion poured the tea in silence. They drank, too, almost in silence, and nibbled at the toast, forgetful that two days before, and for three dreadful months, tea and toast and milk, served on a table laid with white linen, would have seemed like a heavenly dispensation. Their very experience in the cave, which had broken down so many barriers between them, seemed to have reared a new one that neither understood. It was Marion who made a beginning to scale that barrier. "You have made Claire very happy, Philip," she said. "That was easy," he answered. "But it was grand!" "And you too--a little?" he ventured. "You know that, Philip!" And then, a little mischievously: "Remember I tried to make peace between you once." "And a fine job you made of it!" he retorted. Then they both laughed, and lapsed again into silence. But presently Haig arose, went to a cabinet standing against the wall, and brought back a faded photograph, which he handed to her. "My father," he said. She saw a face that seemed a little sad, but the kindest of eyes, with a half serious twinkle in them. "The dear man!" she exclaimed softly. "We were great friends," he said. "We used to take long walks together of a Sunday afternoon. He was a silent man, rather, and we did not talk much, but--shall I tell you one thing he used to say to me, often?" "Yes, Philip." "I believed it then. But things happened to make me think that father was mistaken. For ten years I didn't believe it at all." "What was it, Philip?"