"It was after five o'clock and the side door was open into the yard. Not a soul saw me, and I carried out my original plan. I think when I was in the train I had already begun to regret bitterly, but it was too late to go back--and then next day your letter came to me at Mr. Parsons' and all my pride was up in arms!" Here Michael held her very tight. "Oh, what a brute I was to write that letter," he cried. "All I wanted then was to go away and forget all about you and everything and have lots of nice clothes and join my friend Moravia in Paris. You see, I was still just a silly ignorant child. Mr. Parsons got me a good maid who is with me still, and he agreed at last to my taking the name of Howard--I thought if I kept the Arranstoun everyone would know." "But what did you intend to do, darling, with your life. We were both crazy, of course, you to go--and I to let you." "I had no concrete idea. Just to see the world and buy what I wanted, and sit up late--and not have to obey any rules, I think--and underneath there was a great excitement all the time in the thought of looking perfectly splendid in being a grand grown-up lady when you came back--for of course I believed then that we must meet again." "Well, what changed all that and made you become engaged to Henry, you wicked little thing!" and Michael kissed her fondly--"Was it because I did not come back?--but you could have cabled to me at any time." An enchanting confusion crept over Sabine--she hesitated--she began to speak, then stopped and finally buried her face in his coat. "What is it, darling?" he asked with almost a tone of anxiety in his voice. "Did you have some violent flirtation with someone at this stage? and you think I shall be annoyed--but indeed I shall not, because I do fully realize that whatever you did was my fault for leaving you alone--Tell me, Sabine, you sweet child." "No--it wasn't that----" "Well--then?" "Well--then I was--terrified--it was my old maid, Simone, who told me what had happened--I was still too ignorant to understand things." "Told you what? What wretched story did the old woman invent about me?" Michael's eyes were haughty--that she could listen to stories from a maid! Sabine clasped her hands together--she was deeply moved. "Oh, Michael--you are stupid! How can I possibly tell you--if you won't understand." Then she jumped up suddenly and swiftly brought her blue-despatch box from beside her writing-table and unlocked it with her bracelet key--while Michael with an anxious, puzzled face watched her intently. She sat down again beside him when she had found what she sought--the closed blue leather case which she had looked at so many times. "If you are going to show me some brute's photograph I simply refuse to look," Michael said. "All that part of your life is over and we are going to begin afresh, darling one, no matter what you did."