With an effort she tore herself free--wrenched herself away from the arms whose clasp about her body thrilled her from head to foot. Somewhere in one of the cells of her brain she was conscious of a perfectly clear understanding of the fact that she must be quite mad to fight for escape from the sole thing in life she craved. Celia Mallory didn't really count--nor Roger and her pledge to him. . . . They were only shadows. What counted was Peter's love for her and hers for him. . . . Yet in a curious numbed way she felt she must still defer to those shadows. They stood like sentinels with drawn swords at the gate of happiness, and she would never be able to get past them. So it was no use Peter's staying here. "You must go, Peter!" she exclaimed feverishly. "You must go!" A new look sprang into his eyes--a sudden, terrible doubt and questioning. "You want me to go?" "Yes--yes!" She turned away, gesturing blindly in the direction of the door. The room seemed whirling round her. "I--I _want_ you to go!" Then she felt his hand on her shoulder and, yielding to its insistent pressure, she faced him again. "Nan, is it because you've ceased to care that you tell me to go?" He spoke very quietly, but there was something in the tense, hard-held tones before which she blenched--a note of intolerable fear. Her shaking hands went up to her face. It would be better if he thought that of her--better for him, at least. For her, nothing mattered any more. "Don't ask me, Peter!" she gasped, sobbingly. "Don't ask me!" Slowly his hand fell away from her shoulder. "Then it's true? You don't care? Trenby has taken my place?" A heavy silence dropped between them, broken only by the sullen roll of thunder. Nan shivered a little. Her face was still hidden in her hands. She was struggling with herself--trying to force from her lips the lie which would send the man's reeling faith in her crashing to earth and drive him from her for ever. She knew if he went from her like that, believing she had ceased to care, he would never come back again. He would wipe her out utterly from his thoughts--out of his heart. Henceforward she would be only a dead memory to him--the symbol of a shattered faith. It was more than she could bear. She could not give up that--Peter's faith in her! It was all she had to cling to--to carry her through life. She stretched out her arms to him, crying brokenly: "Oh, Peter--Peter--" At the sound, of her low, shaken voice, with its infinite appeal for understanding, the iron control he had been forcing on himself snapped asunder, and he caught her in his arms, kissing her with the fierce hunger of a man who has been starved of love.