Lingard's bare hand involuntarily rested on the dented figures, the interlaced initials....

Three weeks ago he would have prayed Jane's leave to add a J. and an H.

to these rude scores, for three weeks ago he had been one of the great company of the world's lovers, understanding and sympathising with all the absurdities of love.

And now--even now, though he knew himself for a traitor to the woman sitting silent by his side, he yet felt in a strange way that the link between them was eternal--that in no way could it be broken. Each, so he a.s.sured himself fiercely, had a call on the other.

He was about to put this belief, this instinctive certainty, to the test.

"As I said just now, I've something to ask you, Jane----" His words came haltingly; to his listener they sounded very cold.

"Yes, Hew?" She looked round at him. He was staring at the ground as if something lay there he alone could see.

"I asked you to come out with me to-night, because--because"--and then in a voice so low, so hoa.r.s.e, that she had to bend forward to catch the words--"I want to ask you, to implore you, Jane--to marry me at once."

"At once?" she repeated. "When do you mean by at once, Hew?" She also spoke in a still, low voice. They seemed to be hatching a conspiracy of which one, if not both, should feel ashamed.

And more than ever it seemed to Jane Oglander as if another man, a stranger, had taken possession of Hew Lingard's shape.

"I mean at once!" he answered harshly. "To-morrow--or the day after to-morrow. There's no necessity why we should ever go back to Rede Place! Why shouldn't we walk down to the station now, from here? We should be in London in an hour and a half. People have often done stranger things than that. We could send a message from the station to----" His voice wavered, his lips refused to form Mrs. Maule's name.

He thrust the thought of Athena violently from him; and with the muttered words, "Can't you understand? I love you--I want you, Jane----"

he turned and gathered the woman sitting so stilly by his side into his arms.

She gave a stifled cry of surprise; and then, as he kissed her fiercely once, twice, and then again, there broke from her a low, bitter sigh--the sigh of a woman who feels herself debased by the caresses for which she has longed, of which she has been starved.

To Jane Oglander a kiss, so light, so willing a loan on the part of many women, was so intimate a gift as to be the forerunner of complete surrender. And to-night each of Hew Lingard's kisses was to her a profaned sacrament. Not so had they kissed on that day in London. Now his kisses told her, as no words could have done, of a divided allegiance.

She lay unresponsive, trembling in his arms, her eyes full of a wild, piteous questioning....

With a sudden sense of self-loathing and shame he released her from his arms.

"Well?" he said sullenly. "Well, Jane?" but he knew what her answer would and must be.

"I can't do what you wish, Hew. I don't think that either of us would be happy now--if we did that." She spoke in a quiet, restrained voice. She was too miserable, too deeply humiliated, for tears.

Together they walked out of the summer house and retraced their steps along the ridge.

"As I cannot do what you wish, would you like me to end our engagement?"

He turned on her fiercely. "I did not think," he cried, "that there lived a woman in the world who could be as cruel as you have been to me to-night!"

"I did not mean to be cruel," she said mournfully.

"Unless you wish to drive me to the devil, don't speak like that again,"

he said violently. "Promise me, I mean, that you won't think of breaking our engagement."

She made no answer, and a few moments later in a gentler tone he asked, "Can't you understand, Jane?"

She said humbly, "I try to understand."

A great and a healing flood of tenderness filled her heart, and as if the spiritual tie between them was indeed of so close a nature that Lingard felt her softening for the first time put his hand in hers.

"Jane," he said huskily, "forgive me. Try to forget to-night."

So they walked in silence, hand in hand, through the solitary lane and the now lighted streets of Redyford, uncaring of the few pa.s.sers-by.

But when they came to the park gates Lingard withdrew his hand from hers, and at the door of the Garden Room he left her. "I won't come in yet," he said abruptly, and turning on his heel he disappeared into the night.

And with Jane's going something good and n.o.ble in Lingard went too, and as he walked into the darkness he lashed himself into a sea of deep injury and pain. His heart filled with anger rather than with shame when he evoked the look almost of aversion, of protesting anguish, which had come into her face while his lips had sought and found unresponsive her sweet, tremulous mouth.

He had been longing, craving, for that which he had now only the right to demand from her, and she had cruelly repulsed him.

How amazing that a fortnight--or was it three weeks?--could have so altered a woman!

Even now the memory of those days they had spent together immediately on his return home was dear and sacred to him.

Could he have been mistaken,--such was the question he asked himself to-night,--in his belief that Jane Oglander had been exquisitely sensitive, responsive as are few human beings to every high demand of love?

Was it that his unspoken, unconfessed treachery had killed, obliterated in her the power of response? Nay, it was far more likely that he had made a mistake,--that the woman he loved was cold, as many tender women are cold, temperamentally incapable of that fusion of soul and body which is the essence of love between a man and a woman.

Had he not discovered this lack in Jane through his contact with a very different nature--with one who was full of quick, warm-blooded, generous impulses? Athena Maule might do foolish things,--she had admitted to him that more than once she had been tempted to do wild, reckless things,--but it was only her heart that would lead her astray.

The man in Lingard, knowing as he thought the hidden truth which underlay her story, felt full of burning sympathy.

As he at last walked back to the house, it was pleasant to him to feel that he would be able to forget the painful, the humiliating hour he had gone through with the woman who was to be his wife, in the company of Athena Maule.

Athena was in her boudoir. She had been there alone for two hours, and they had been hours filled with impatient revolt and anxiety.

After Mrs. Pache had gone Athena had tried to find first Jane, and then Lingard. Then d.i.c.k Wantele, meeting her, had casually observed that the two others had gone out for a long walk.

Jane and Lingard out together beyond her ken and pursuit? The knowledge stabbed her. Athena was convinced, aye quite honestly convinced, that these two, her friends both of them, were ill-suited the one to the other.

She felt the breach between herself and Jane, and it hurt her the more because she had done nothing--nothing to deserve that Jane should avoid her as she sometimes felt sure Jane was doing.

It was not her fault if General Lingard was gradually coming to see the terrible mistake he had made. But to-night, while waiting, too excited, too impatient to do anything but sit and stare into the fire, she told herself that she was also disappointed in Lingard.

What a strange, peculiar man he was! Since the night before Jane Oglander's arrival he had said nothing--nothing that is, that all the world might not have heard. And yet she could not mistake his thraldom.

If nothing else had proved it, d.i.c.k Wantele's behaviour would have done so. Twice in the last few days d.i.c.k had made a strong, a meaning, appeal to Athena to leave Rede Place. Her heart swelled at the thought of d.i.c.k's discourtesy and unkindness. She even wondered if he had dared to say anything to Lingard. During the last two days Lingard had certainly avoided finding himself alone with her....

The only one of them all who seemed perfectly at ease, and who was as usual absorbed in his own selfish ills and in his dull books, was Richard. Fortunately he took up a great deal of Jane's time.

At last, when it was nearly seven o'clock, the door opened, and Lingard came in. He had instinctively made his way to her, without stopping to think whether he were wise or no in what he was doing. During the last two days, putting a strong restraint on himself, he had avoided Athena, and his strange request to Jane, his pleading for an immediate marriage, had been the outcome of the state in which he found himself.