Rather diffidently Jean voiced her doubts, recalling him from the reverie into which he had fallen. “_I_ go to England?” he exclaimed. “God forbid! No, you would go without me.” “Without you?” Peterson sprang up and began pacing restlessly to and fro. “Yes, without me. I’m going away. I--I can’t stay here any longer. I’ve tried, Jean, for your sake”--he looked across at her with a kind of appeal in his eyes--“but I can’t stand it. I must move on--get away somewhere by myself. Beirnfels--without her----” He broke off abruptly and stood still, staring down into the heart of the fire. Then he added in a wrung voice: “It will be a year ago... to-morrow.” Jean was silent. Never before had he let her see the raw wound in his soul. Latterly she had divined a growing restlessness in him, sensed the return of the wander-fever which sometimes obsessed him, but she had not realised that it was pain--sheer, intolerable pain--which was this time driving him forth from the place that had held his happiness. He had appeared so little changed after Jacqueline’s death, so much the wayward, essentially lovable and unpractical creature of former times, still able to find supreme delight in a sunset, or an exquisite picture, or a wild ride across the purple hills, that Jean had sometimes marvelled, how easily he seemed able to forget. And, after all, he had not forgotten--had never been able to forget! The gay, debonair side which he had shown the world--that same rather selfish, beauty-loving, charming personality she had always known--had been only a shell, a husk hiding a hurt that had never healed--that never would find healing in this world. Jean felt herself submerged beneath a wave of self-reproach that she could have thus crudely accepted Glyn’s attitude at its face value. But it was useless to give expression to her penitence. She could find no words which might not wound, and while she was still dully trying to readjust her mind to this new aspect of things, her father’s voice broke across her thoughts--smooth, polished, with just its usual inflection of whimsical amusement, rather as though the world were a good sort of joke in which he found himself constrained to take part. “I’ve made the most paternal arrangements for your welfare in my absence, Jean. I want to discuss them with you. You see, I couldn’t take you with me--I don’t know in the least where I’m going or where I shall fetch up. That’s the charm of it”--his face kindling. “And it wouldn’t be right or proper for me to drag a young woman of your age--and attractions--half over the world with me.” By which Jean, not in the least deceived by his air of conscious rectitude, comprehended that he didn’t want to be bothered with her. He was bidding for freedom, untrammelled by any petticoats.