She fancied he concealed a smile in the darkness. "Not very complimentary of you," he answered composedly. "It wasn't, was it? I'm so sorry," she agreed in eager haste. "Have you come to see Robin? I'm afraid he's out. He said he should be back rather late to-night." "No," he replied evenly, "I've not come to see Robin." Then, with a sudden leap in his voice: "I came to see you, Ann." "To see me?" she murmured confusedly. "Yes. Am I to tell you all about it out here in the cold, or may I come in?" Without waiting for her answer, he quietly lifted the latch which had refused to move for her trembling fingers, and silently, half in a dream, she led the way into the house. There was no light in the living-room other than that yielded by the logs which burned on the open hearth, but even by their flickering glow she could discern how much he had altered since she had last seen him. He was thinner, and his face had the worn look of a man who has recently passed through some stern mental and spiritual conflict. There were furrows of weariness deeply graven on either side the mouth, and Ann felt her heart swell within her in an overwhelming impulse of tenderness and longing to smooth away those new lines from the beloved face. Before she knew it, that imperative inner need had manifested in unconscious gesture. Her hands went out to him as naturally and instinctively as the hands of a mother go out to her hurt child. But he did not take them in his. Instead, he seemed almost to draw away from her, his hands slowly clenching as though the man were putting some immense compulsion of restraint upon himself. "I've come back, Ann," he said slowly. "I've come back." Her outstretched hands dropped to her sides. She was trembling, but she forced herself into speech. "Why did you go?" she asked very low. "I went--to see if I could live without you, to try and put you out of my life.... And I can't do it." He spoke with a curious deliberation. "If ever a man fought against love, I fought against it. I'd done with love--it's the thing I've cut out of my plan of life these ten years." His mouth twisted wryly as if even yet the memory of the past had power to stab him. "I distrusted love. And I distrusted you." He stopped abruptly, still conveying that impression of a man forcibly holding himself in check. "And--and now?" Ann's voice was almost inaudible. They had been standing very still, held motionless and apart by a strange intensity of feeling, but unconsciously she had drawn closer to him as she spoke. As though her instinctive little movement towards him snapped the last link of the iron control he had been forcing on himself, he suddenly bent forward, and, snatching her up into his arms, held her crushed against his breast, kissing her with the overwhelming passion of a man who has been denied through dreary months of longing. Heedless of past or future, Ann yielded, surrendering with her lips the whole brave young heart of her.