When he went into the library Lynda sat before the fire knitting a long strip of vivid wools. Conning had never seen her so employed and it had the effect of puzzling him; it was like seeing her--well, smoking, as some of her friends did! Nothing wrong in it--but, inharmonious. "What are you making, Lyn?" he asked, taking the ottoman and drawing close to her. "It--it isn't anything, Con. No one wants trash like this. It fulfils its mission when it is ravelled and knitted, then unravelled. You know what Stevenson says: 'I travel for travel's sake; the great affair is to move.' I knit for knitting's sake; it keeps my hands busy while my--my soul basks." She looked up with a smile and Truedale saw that she was ill at ease. It was the one thing that unnerved him. Had she been her old, self-contained self he could have depended upon her to bear her part while he eased his soul by burdening hers; but now he caught in her the appealing tenderness that had always awakened in old William Truedale the effort to save her from herself--from the cares others laid upon her. Conning, instead of plunging into his confession, looked at her in such a protecting, yearning way that Lynda's eyes fell, and the soft colour slowly crept in her cheeks. In the stillness, that neither knew how to break, Truedale noticed the gown Lynda wore. It was blue and clinging. The whiteness of her slim arms showed through the loose sleeves; the round throat was bare and girlish in its drooping curve. For one mad moment Truedale tried to stifle his conscience. Why should he not have this love and happiness that lay close to him? In what was he different from the majority of men? Then he thought--as others before him had thought--that, since the race must be preserved, the primal impulses should not be denied. They outlived everything; they rallied from shock--even death; they persisted until extinction; and here was this sweet woman with all her gracious loveliness near him. He loved her! Yes, strange as it seemed even then to him, Truedale acknowledged that he loved her with the love, unlike yet like the love that had been too rudely awakened in the lonely woods when he had been still incapable of understanding it. Then the storm outside reached his consciousness and awakened memories that hurt and stung him. No. He was not as many men who could take and take and find excuse. The very sincerity of the past and future must prove itself, now, in this throbbing, vital present. Only so could he justify himself and his belief in goodness. He must open his heart and soul to the woman beside him. There was no other alternative. But first they dined together across the hall. Truedale noted every special dish--the meal was composed of his favourite viands. The intimacy of sitting opposite Lynda, the smiling pleasure of old Thomas who served them, combined to lure him again from his stern sense of duty.