"He is coming here--this evening--to take you home," he said.

For an instant she stared at him with an ashen face; then she gave a little stifled scream.

"No, no; I can't! I never want to see him again! Let me go! Oh! Let me go! I thought you loved me, and now this is what you have done."

He put her into the chair again, keeping her hands firmly in his.

He told her as briefly as possible of his conversation last night with Chris.

"It was never the truth that he married you for your money," he said. He said it over and over again, trying to drive it home to her. She looked so dazed and white, almost like a sleep-walker who had been roughly aroused.

"I alone am to blame," he insisted quietly. "But for me Chris would have found out from the first that he loved you ... Oh, Marie, try and understand, dear--try and understand."

She looked up at him with vague eyes and nodded vacantly.

She was trying to understand; she wanted to understand, but her brain refused to work.

She kept telling herself that she was going back home, that Chris was coming to take her home, that she was not going away with Feathers, after all, that it had just been a sweet, impossible dream, but it all sounded like so much foolishness.

How could Chris possibly love her? How could he possibly wish to take her home after all that had happened? He would hate and despise her when he knew.

She felt so cold! Her hands were like ice, and yet her head was burning hot.

Feathers went on talking to her, and she tried to listen, tried to keep her thoughts concentrated, but they would wander away; then presently--after a long while it seemed--he lifted her to her feet, and she heard him say that Chris could not be coming now after all, that it was too late--that it was past nine o'clock.

She laughed because he seemed so distressed.

"I knew he wouldn't come," she said, but it did not seem to matter.

She let him help her into the car--the same car in which she had ridden with him happily so many times before. She wished she could feel that happiness now, but her heart felt all dead and cold.

"I knew Chris wouldn't come," she said again stupidly. "Not that it matters at all," she added, with an empty little laugh.

Nothing mattered! This second bid for happiness had failed as the first had done and she wished she could die.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked, as he folded the rug round her, and he answered "Home."

He looked up and down the road with haggard eyes, his ears strained for the sound of a car that might be bringing Chris. He could not understand why he had not come. He had counted on him with such pa.s.sionate certainty that it never occurred to him for a moment that his note could have miscarried. His mind was racked with torturing doubts.

And all the time Marie's words were hammering against his brain, adding to his torture.

"It isn't that I don't love you--that I didn't mean it when I said I loved you... ."

Was that the truth? And if so, was he doing the right thing by sending her back to her husband?

Until to-night he had only tried to cheat himself with the belief that she loved him, but now everything seemed changed, distorted.

It was unusually dark, and a thick mist from the river made it difficult to see more than a yard ahead, in spite of the bright headlamps of the car.

Feathers had been tinkering with the engine in order to gain time, but he closed down the bonnet now, and came to the side of the car where Marie sat.

"Are you ready?" he asked hoa.r.s.ely.

"Yes--" he had turned to move away, when she caught his arm.

"If--if it's good-bye--" she said, in such a faint whisper that he could hardly hear the words. "I should ... oh, I should like to kiss you once more."

For an instant he stood like a man turned to stone, then he turned deliberately, and crushed her in his arms.

For a long moment their lips clung together, and it seemed to Marie that in that kiss, Feathers gave her his heart and himself and all that he had--forever. When he released her and she sank back, trembling and faint, she heard his hoa.r.s.e "G.o.d bless you" as if in a dream, and presently he was beside her, driving slowly back through the mist and darkness.

She only spoke to him once to say:

"Supposing--supposing they won't have me at home any more?"

The blood rushed to his face.

"We won't suppose anything so impossible," he said, but a fierce exultation pa.s.sed through him; for if such a thing were to happen, he knew that she would be his in very truth.

CHAPTER XXIII

"And if I die first, shall death be then A lonesome watchtower whence I see you weep?"

CHRIS had gone out that morning without seeing either Miss Chester or his wife. His first pa.s.sionate bitterness and anger against Feathers had pa.s.sed, leaving him more wretched than he had ever been in his life, as he remembered their long friendship.

He who had never known trouble hitherto was almost crushed to the earth by it now; and the hardest part of it all to bear was the knowledge that to a large extent he and his selfishness had been to blame.

He told himself that he had no wish to see Feathers any more, and yet it was with the sneaking hope that he would find him there that he went to the club after having mooned about the West End all the morning.

He made a pretense of lunch, and drank three whiskies and sodas, which made him feel quarrelsome, and he had just decided that he would hunt up Aston Knight and tell him what he thought of him, when one of the waiters came to him in the smoking-room.

"If you please, sir, you are wanted on the 'phone; very urgent, if you please."

Chris was up in a second. There was only one thing in the world that could be urgent to him, he knew, and that was if it concerned Marie.

It was Miss Chester's maid, Greyson, who answered his impatient hullo, and his heart seemed to stop beating as he could hear the distress in her voice.

"Oh, sir, could you come home, please? I've been trying to find you all the morning. I rang up Mr. Daker's rooms, but you weren't there."

Chris struck in roughly:

"Well, I'm here now. What is it? Can't you speak up?"

"It's Miss Chester, sir! She was all right when I called her this morning, but when I went up again ..."