The leash was slipping. She trembled, aching to answer him as her whole soul dictated, to tell him the truth--that she wanted him every minute of the day and that life without him stretched before her like a barren waste.

"I--we--oh, you're making it so hard for me!" she said imploringly.

"Please go--go, now!"

Instead, he caught her in his arms, holding her crushed against his breast.

"No, I'm not going. Oh, Nan--little Nan that I love! I can't give you up again. Beloved!--Soul of me!" And all the love and longing, against which he had struggled unavailingly throughout those empty months of separation, came pouring from his lips in a torrent of pa.s.sionate pleading that shook her heart.

With an effort she tore herself free--wrenched herself away from the arms whose clasp about her body thrilled her from head to foot.

Somewhere in one of the cells of her brain she was conscious of a perfectly clear understanding of the fact that she must be quite mad to fight for escape from the sole thing in life she craved. Celia Mallory didn't really count--nor Roger and her pledge to him. . . . They were only shadows. What counted was Peter's love for her and hers for him. . . . Yet in a curious numbed way she felt she must still defer to those shadows. They stood like sentinels with drawn swords at the gate of happiness, and she would never be able to get past them. So it was no use Peter's staying here.

"You must go, Peter!" she exclaimed feverishly. "You must go!"

A new look sprang into his eyes--a sudden, terrible doubt and questioning.

"You want me to go?"

"Yes--yes!" She turned away, gesturing blindly in the direction of the door. The room seemed whirling round her. "I--I _want_ you to go!"

Then she felt his hand on her shoulder and, yielding to its insistent pressure, she faced him again.

"Nan, is it because you've ceased to care that you tell me to go?" He spoke very quietly, but there was something in the tense, hard-held tones before which she blenched--a note of intolerable fear.

Her shaking hands went up to her face. It would be better if he thought that of her--better for him, at least. For her, nothing mattered any more.

"Don't ask me, Peter!" she gasped, sobbingly. "Don't ask me!"

Slowly his hand fell away from her shoulder.

"Then it's true? You don't care? Trenby has taken my place?"

A heavy silence dropped between them, broken only by the sullen roll of thunder. Nan shivered a little. Her face was still hidden in her hands. She was struggling with herself--trying to force from her lips the lie which would send the man's reeling faith in her crashing to earth and drive him from her for ever. She knew if he went from her like that, believing she had ceased to care, he would never come back again. He would wipe her out utterly from his thoughts--out of his heart. Henceforward she would be only a dead memory to him--the symbol of a shattered faith.

It was more than she could bear. She could not give up that--Peter's faith in her! It was all she had to cling to--to carry her through life.

She stretched out her arms to him, crying brokenly:

"Oh, Peter--Peter--"

At the sound, of her low, shaken voice, with its infinite appeal for understanding, the iron control he had been forcing on himself snapped asunder, and he caught her in his arms, kissing her with the fierce hunger of a man who has been starved of love.

She leaned against him, physically unable to resist, and deep down in her heart glad that she could not. For the moment everything was swept away in an anguish of happiness--in the ecstasy of burning kisses crushed against her mouth and throat and the strained clasp of arms locked round her.

"My woman!" he muttered unsteadily. "My woman!"

She could feel the hard beating of his heart, and her slender body trembled in his arms with an answering pa.s.sion that sprang from the depths of her being. Forgetful of everything, save only of each other and their great love, their lips clung together.

Presently he tilted her head back. Her face was white, the shadowed eyes like two dark stains on the ivory bloom of a magnolia.

"Beloved! . . . Nan, say that you love me--let me hear you say it!"

"You know!" Her voice shook uncontrollably. "You don't need to ask me, Peter. It--it _hurts_ to love anyone as I love you."

His hold tightened round her.

"You're mine . . . mine out of all the world . . . my beloved. . . ."

A flare of lightning and again the menacing roll of thunder. Then, sudden as the swoop of a bat, the electric burners quivered and went out, leaving only the glow of the fire to pierce the gloom. In the dim light she could see his face bent over her--the face of her man, the man she loved, and all that was woman and lover within her leaped to answer the call of her mate--the infinite, imperious demand of human love that has waited and hungered through empty days and nights till at last it shall be answered by the loved one.

For a moment she lay unresisting in his arms, helpless in the grip of the pa.s.sion of love which had engulfed them both. Then the memory of the shadows--the sentinels with drawn swords--came back to her. The swords flashed, cleaving the dividing line afresh before her eyes.

Slowly she leaned away from his breast, her face suddenly drawn and tortured.

"Peter, I must go back--"

"Back? To Trenby?" Then, savagely: "You can't. I want you!"

He stooped his head and she felt his mouth on hers.

A glimmer of pale firelight searched out the two tense faces; the shadowy room seemed listening, waiting--waiting--

"I want you!" he reiterated hoa.r.s.ely. "I can't live without you any longer. Nan . . . come with me . . ."

A tremulous flicker of lightning shivered across the darkness. The dead electric burners leaped into golden globes of light once more, and in the garish, shattering glare the man and woman sprang apart and stood staring at each other, trembling, with pa.s.sion-stricken faces. . . .

The long silence was broken at last, broken by a little inarticulate sound--half-sigh, half-sob--from Nan.

Peter raised his head and looked at her. His face was grey.

"G.o.d!" he muttered. "Where were we going?"

He stumbled to the chimneypiece, and, leaning his arms on it, buried his face against them.

Presently she spoke to him, timidly.

"Peter?" she said. "Peter?"

At the sound of her voice he turned towards her, and the look in his eyes hurt her like a physical blow.

"Oh, my dear . . . my dear!" she cried, trembling towards him. "Don't look like that . . . Ah! don't look like that!"

And her hands went fluttering out in the mother-yearning that every woman feels for her man in trouble.

"Forgive me, Nan . . . I'm sorry."

She hardly recognised the low, toneless voice.

Her eyes were shining. "Sorry for loving me?" she said.