"Yes," he assented gravely. "It's forbidden us. But now--just this once--let us have a few moments, you and I alone, when there's no need to pretend we don't care--when we can be _ourselves_!" "No--no--" she broke in breathlessly. "It's not much, to ask--five minutes together out of the whole of life! Roger can't grudge them. He'll have you--always." His arms closed jealously round her. "Yes--always," she repeated. With a sudden choked cry she clung to him despairingly. "Peter, sometimes I feel I can't bear it! Oh, why were we _allowed_ to care like this?" "God knows!" he muttered. He released his hold of her abruptly and began pacing up and down--savagely, like some caged beast. Nan stood staring out over the moon-washed sea with eyes that saw nothing. The five minutes they had snatched together from the rest of life were slipping by--each one a moment of bitter and intolerable anguish. Presently Peter swung round and came to her side. But he did not touch her. His face looked drawn, and his eyes burned smoulderingly--like fire half-quenched. "Nan, if I didn't care so much, I'd ask you to go away with me. I--don't quite know what life will be like without you--hell, probably. But at least it's going to be my own little hell and I'm not going to drag you down into it. I'm bound irrevocably. And you--you're bound, too. You can't play fast and loose with the promise you've given Trenby. So we've just got to face it out." He broke off abruptly. Tiny beads of sweat rimmed his upper lip and his hands hung clenched at his sides. Even Nan hardly realised the effort his restraint was costing him. "What--what do you mean, Peter?" she asked haltingly. "I mean that I'm going away--that I mustn't see you any more." A cry fled from her lips--denying, supplicating, and at the desolate sound of it a tremor ran through his limbs. It was as though his body fought and struggled against the compelling spirit within it. "We mustn't meet again," he went on steadily. "Not meet--ever--do you mean?" There was something piteous in the young, shaken voice. "Never, if we can help it. We must go separate ways, Nan." She tried to speak, but her lips moved soundlessly. Only her eyes, meeting his, held a mute agony that tortured him. All at once his self-control gave way, and the passion of love and longing against which he had been fighting swept aside the barriers which circumstance had placed about it. His arms went round her, holding her close while he rained kisses on her throat and lips and eyes--fierce, desperate kisses that burned against her face. And Nan kissed him back, yielding up her soul upon her lips, knowing that after this last passionate farewell there could he no more giving or receiving. Only a forgetting. . . . At last they drew apart from one another, though Peter's arms still held her, but only tenderly as for the last time. "This is good-bye, dearest of all," he said presently.