“You did that on purpose,” she said at last. “You don’t suppose I believe the story of the broken steering-rod?” He smiled with some bitterness. Fate was for ever against him. The moment they met in this extravagant way, there started up the barrier of a lie. “I couldn’t very well scare those young folks with a confession of attempted suicide, could I? After all, the naked truth may at times be positively indecent.” “Then you intended to do it?” “Oh, yes,” said he. “But it ended, like every other Great Adventure I’ve attempted in my life, in burlesque. I assure you, that when I found myself pitched into this clump of gorse and able to pick myself up with nothing worse than a gasping for breath, I—well—the humiliation of it!—I cursed the day I was born.” “Why did you do it?” she asked. She had scarcely regained balance. The situation seemed unreal. But a few minutes ago he had been far from her thoughts, which were concerned with the woman to whose possibly dying bed she had been summoned, with the dreary days at Medlow now that Blaise Olifant had gone, with the still beauty of the hills and their purple sunset shadows. And now, here she was, alone with him, remote from the world, conversing as dispassionately as though he had returned from the dead—as indeed he had almost returned. At her question, he threw his chauffeur’s cap on the grass and passed his hand over his hair. The familiar gesture, the familiar nervous brown hand brought her a step nearer to reality. “If you can’t guess, it is useless for me to tell you,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe me.” He took out a cigarette. She noted a trembling of the fingers. “Do you mind?” She nodded, he lit the cigarette. “I thought here, at any rate, I was hidden from you for the rest of my life. It wouldn’t have been very long anyway. I had made up my mind some day soon to set you free of me—and to-day or to-morrow—what did it matter? I don’t ask you to believe that either. I don’t see how you can believe a word I say. I gave you to understand, that I was in Poland—you find me here. When did Myra tell you I was here?” Returning sanity had corrected his first mad impression. How could she be a mile from Pendish if she had not heard from Myra? But she regarded him open-mouthed. “Myra? What has Myra to do with it? Of course I had no conception you were here? I knew you were not in Poland. A man—a Pole—I forget his name—wrote to Major Olifant, last year, wondering what had become of you. You had never joined him——” “Boronowski,” said Triona. “That was the name——” “And you took it for granted I had lied to him too.” Her eyes dropped beneath his half sad, half ironic gaze. She made a little despairing gesture. “What would you have?” “And Myra never told you anything about me?” “You haven’t answered my question,” she said, straightening herself: “Where does Myra come in?”