Her thoughts flew to Blaise. She would trust herself with him--now, at any time, always. But then, perhaps--the after thought came like a knife-thrust--perhaps he did not care! “A man who--loved me,” she said dully, “would not do what you’ve just done.” “He would--sooner or later. Unless his veins ran milk and water!” He drew a step nearer and stood staring down at her sombrely. “Do you know what you’re like, I wonder? With your great golden eyes and your maddening mouth and that little cleft in your white chin.... You’re angry because I kissed you. I wonder I didn’t do it before! I’ve wanted to, dozens of times. But I wanted your love more than a passing kiss. I’ve waited for that--waited all these weeks. And now you refuse it--you’ve not even _understood_ that you’re all earth and heaven to me. God! How blind you must have been!” She was silent. Her anger was waning, giving place to a certain distressful comprehension of the mighty force which had suddenly broken bondage in the man beside her. Dimly, from her own knowledge of the yearning bred of the loved one’s nearness, she envisaged what these last weeks must have meant to a man of Burke’s temperament. Was it any wonder, when suddenly made to realise that the woman he loved not only did not love him in return, but had failed even to sense his love for her, that his stormy spirit had rebelled--flung off its shackles? An element of self-reproach tinctured her thoughts. In a measure the fault had been hers; her self-absorption was to blame. “Yes,” she acknowledged. “I’m afraid I have been blind, Geoffrey. Indeed--indeed I would have prevented all this if I had known, if I had guessed. But, honestly, I just thought of you--you and Judith--as friends.” “I believe you really did,” he said slowly, almost incredulously. Then, as though in swift corollary: “Jean, is there anyone else?” The question drove at her with its sudden grasp of the truth. Her face grew slowly drawn and pinched-looking beneath his merciless gaze and her lips moved speechlessly. “So it _is_ that, is it? And does he--has he----” “Geoffrey, you are insufferable!” The words came wrung from her in quick, low protest. “You have no right--no right----” “No, I suppose I haven’t,” he admitted, touched by the stricken look in her eyes. “I’d no business to ask that. For the moment, it’s enough that you don’t love me.... But I shall never give you up, Jean. You’re mine--my woman!” The light of possession flared up once more in his eyes. “Do you remember I told you once that, if a man makes up his mind, he can get his own way over most things? Well, it’s true.” He paused a moment, then abruptly swung round on his heel and without a word of farwell, strode away across the garden towards the gate by which he had entered.