“The splendid knight is hard to please; mere beauty is too commonplace.” “Isn’t it sure to be?” a little smile played round his lips as he made his gallant retort. “How can mere beauty ever appeal to me, who have been accustomed to all you have besides?” “Ah, flatterer!…” she said softly, and smiled into the fire. There was a tense moment in which he longed to bend down and kiss her as he had done when the room was full of violets, but instead he pulled himself up sharply and moved away. “Well, I must be off. Perhaps tonight I shall have the luck to be able to look at her from a distance, and not strike the jarring note. I’ll try to come in tomorrow to see what you have decided, and then I’ll run down on Friday afternoon for a long weekend, to see that you are taking decent care of yourself.” As an afterthought he added: “I suppose Hal couldn’t get off?” “I’ll ask her if you like. She would love it, if she could.” “And keep us amused too. I should get my head bitten off, but you could put it on again for me. Good-bye. Anyhow, it is a promise that you will go”; and with rather a hurried farewell, he was gone. Lorraine remained some moments gazing into the fire, and there was a softness in her eyes. She knew perfectly well that he had hurried at the last moment because when they stood together on the hearth he had wanted to kiss her. And she could not help comparing his strength in refraining with what would have been the action of most of the men she had known, who would have professed more, and meant less. She leaned her head down on her hand, and wondered a little pitifully: “Why had the best she had ever known come to her too late?” And then followed the dangerous thought: “Is it indeed too late?” CHAPTER XXXV Lorraine was not able to see Hal, but she talked to her on the telephone, and told her she was going into the country at once, and Alymer was coming down for the weekend. “We wondered if you could get off too. Do try,” she said. Hal answered at once that she could not manage it this week, but possibly the next, if Lorraine were still away. “I’ve only arranged for a week’s holiday,” Lorr aine replied. “What a nuisance you should be unable to come this week.” As a matter of fact, Hal was only going out for the day with her cousin on Sunday, but an urgent little note from Sir Edwin had begged her to keep Saturday free for him; and because the suspense was becoming unendurable, she granted his request, determined to know the truth. So it happened that Lorraine motored down alone to a quaint little fishing-village on the south coast, where there was a charming, old-fashioned, creeper-decked hotel, too far from the railway for the ordinary weekend tourists, and patronised mainly by motorists in the summer. And on Friday the motor went back to town to fetch Alymer, bringing him down about four o’clock, unaccompanied.