"I have finished it."

The host looked at his guest and read in his eyes a defiant dislike and a repressed ferocity, but he chose to ignore it. The long-fostered urbanity of his make-believe must last a little longer. But at that moment Stuart's eyes met those of Conscience and he acknowledged a sense of chagrin.

After all, he was leaving to-day and whatever his feelings, he had so far been outwardly the beneficiary of Tollman's hospitality. Nothing was to be gained, except a sort of churlish satisfaction, by assuming at the eleventh hour a blunt and open hostility of manner.

"I'm sorry," suggested Tollman evenly. "I had hoped that we might have you with us longer. You have brought a certain animation to the uneventfulness of our life here."

Stuart changed his manner with an effort.

"Thank you," he replied. "But I've already over-stayed the time I had allowed myself for a vacation. There are many neglected things to be taken up and finished."

"You hadn't spoken of leaving us before." The regret in Tollman's voice was sincere, because it was the regret of a trapper who sees game slipping away from the snare, and it made him perhaps a shade over insistent. "Do you really regard it as so important?"

For just an instant a gleam of anger showed in the visitor's eyes under this questioning, and his glance, leveled straight at his host, was that of a man who would prefer open combat to veiled hostility.

"Not only important," he corrected, "but vital."

"Of course, in that event," murmured Mr. Tollman, "there is nothing more to say."

But an hour later as Conscience and Farquaharson sat on the terrace, somewhat silent and constrained, Eben joined them with a deeply troubled face.

"I've just come from the telephone," he announced with the air of a man in quandary. "It was an imperative call from Boston--and it puts me in a most awkward position."

Farquaharson, sitting with the drawn brow of preoccupation, simulated for his host's assertion no interest and offered no response, but Conscience asked, "What is it, Eben?"

"It's a business matter but one that involves a duty to my associates. I don't see how I can ignore it or decline to go."

"But why shouldn't you go?" inquired his wife, and immediately Eben replied.

"Ordinarily I should, but Stuart says he must leave for New York to-day and there are no servants on the place. You can't stay here absolutely alone."

"I shall be all right," she declared, but her husband raised his hands in a gesture of reasonable protest.

"I couldn't think of it," he insisted. "Why, it's a half-mile to the nearest house. It wouldn't do."

Then with an urgency of manner he turned to Farquaharson.

"Stuart, I dislike greatly to ask you to change your plans--but you realize the situation. Can't you put off leaving until to-morrow?"

The younger man turned slowly and his gaze was disconcertingly piercing, as he asked, "Don't you regard that as a somewhat unconventional suggestion--leaving Conscience here with no one but me?

What of Dame Grundy?"

Eben only laughed and arched his brows in amusement.

"Why, my dear boy, you're a member of the family, aren't you? Such a question is the height of absurdity."

"Your faith is touching," retorted the visitor dryly, then he added: "I'm sorry, but I must go this afternoon."

Before him rose the true proportions of the ordeal to which his host so casually invited him, and from facing them he flinched with the honesty of genuine apprehension.

After last night each hour spent here meant trusting under fire a resolution attained only in a moment of something like exaltation. Such an experiment seemed the rashness of sheer irresponsibility, and to underestimate its danger was only recklessness.

Then he saw Conscience's eyes fixed musingly upon him and in them brooded a confidence which he could not analyze or comprehend.

"I wouldn't urge it," went on Eben persistently, "if there were any other solution--but there doesn't seem to be. So in spite of your objections I believe you'll do as I ask, Stuart, even at the cost of some inconvenience to yourself. In a way you can't refuse, my boy, because until this morning you gave us no warning of this sudden flight."

And with a complacency which the younger man found as galling as an insult, the host turned and went into the house with an air of one who takes for granted compliance with his expressed wish.

Indeed, his line of reasoning admitted no doubt or shadow of doubt. He had construed Stuart's first refusal as a mere trick of intrigue, cloaking under the appearance of protest a situation eagerly welcomed.

Refuse an uninterrupted opportunity to take to his embraces the woman he adored with a guilty passion! Eben laughed to himself at the thought.

Does a hungry lion scorn striking down its prey? Does a thief repudiate an unwatched treasury?

But when he had gone, Stuart turned indignantly to Conscience.

"You see, don't you, that it's impossible?"

"Why?" she asked, and in his bewilderment he found himself answering excitedly:

"Why? Do you mean that, after last night, you would trust yourself here ... with me ... and no one else? Didn't we both admit that it was too much for us--unless we separated?"

"After last night," she responded, and the fearlessness of her voice utterly confounded him, "I would trust myself with you anywhere."

"God in Heaven!" he burst out. "Don't you realize that all strength is relative? Don't you know that any boiler ever made will explode if you give it enough pressure?"

"It's not a test I welcome either," she declared seriously. "But I do believe in you now--and there's another side to it." After a moment's hesitation she went on slowly: "After going through last night--and after trying to face the future ... there's comfort in feeling that he trusts me like that. I don't deserve it, but I'd like to ... and when he comes back to-morrow, if there's one day more of fight left in you, Stuart dear--I can."

His expression changed and he said dubiously: "It's going to be hard."

"Yes, but how can we tell him that?"

He nodded acknowledgment of the point. "There _is_ something in being trusted," he told her resolutely. "If you can feel secure with me one day more--I'll go through with it."

So Eben had his way and put his own damaging construction on the result.

"Good!" he announced when the visitor finally acceded; "I felt sure you wouldn't leave me in the lurch. I'll drive the buggy to the train and leave it at the livery stable until I get back--since we have no chauffeur."

When Tollman had gone Stuart came to Conscience on the terrace. "You'll be all right here for a while, won't you?" he asked. "I think I'll go for a tramp."

She said nothing, but her eyes were questioning, and the man answered their interrogation almost gruffly.

"We've got to walk close to the edge," he said with the quiet of restrained passion. "You trust me, you say, and even before you said it I read it in your eyes. I want that same trust to be in them to-morrow.... I don't know how you feel, but I'm like the reforming drunkard--tortured by his thirst." He paused, then added, "I think it's just as well to walk off my restiveness if I can."

It was five o'clock when he returned, hot and weary from fast tramping in the blistering heat, but when he presented himself, as dusty as a miller to Conscience, who received him among the flowers of her garden, the woman recognized, from his face and the smile of self-victory in his eyes, that he had come back a dependable ally and not a dangerous enemy.

In his voice as he hailed her was the old ring of comradeship--and it was almost cheerful. "Hurry into your bathing suit," he invited tersely.

"The water is bluer than water ever was before."

Her eyes met his dubiously. She had not, like himself, burned out her wretchedness of spirit in muscular fatigue.