Gwen nodded.

“Oh, there’s no doubt of that.  He treats her already as if she were his property.  You won’t tell her I told you, Reggie?  It will simply precipitate matters if you do.”

“No; I shan’t tell her.  I never argue with women.”  Carey spoke almost savagely.  He was staring at something that Gwen could not see.

“Do you think you will be able to stop it?” she asked him, with a slightly nervous hesitation.

His eyes came back to her.  He seemed to consider her for a moment.  Then, seeing that she was really troubled, he spoke with sudden kindliness: 

“I think so, yes.  But never mind how!  Leave it to me and put it out of your head as much as possible!  I quite agree with you that it is an arrangement that wouldn’t do at all.  Why on earth couldn’t your friend the Admiral speak before?”

“I wish he had,” said Gwen, from her heart.  “And I believe he does, too, now.  But men are so idiotic, Reggie.  They always miss their opportunities.”

“Think so?” said Carey.  “Some men never have any, it seems to me.”

And he left her wondering at the bitterness of his speech.

IV

The winter sunlight was streaming into Major Coningsby’s gloomy library when Carey again stood within it.  The Major was out riding, he had been told, but he was expected back ere long; and he had decided to wait for him.

And so he stood waiting before the portrait; and closely, critically, he studied it by the morning light.

It was the face which for five years now he had carried graven on his heart.  She was the one woman to him—­the woman of his dream.  Throughout his wanderings he had cherished the memory of her—­a secret and priceless possession to which he clung day and night, waking and sleeping.  He had made no effort to find her during those years, but silently, almost in spite of himself, he had kept her in his heart, had called her to him in his dreams, yearning to her across the ever-widening gulf, hungering dumbly for the voice he had never heard.

He knew that he was no favourite with women.  All his life his reserve had been a barrier that none had ever sought to pass till this woman—­the woman who should have been his fate—­had been drifted to him through life’s stress and tumult and had laid her hand with perfect confidence in his.  And now it was laid upon him to betray that confidence.  He no longer had the right to keep her secret.  He had protected her once, and it had been as a hidden, sacred bond invisibly linking them together.  But it could do so no longer.  The time had come to wrest that precious link apart.

Sharply he turned from the picture.  The dark eyes tortured him.  They seemed to be pleading with him, entreating him.  There came a sudden clatter without, the tramp of heavy feet, the jingle of spurs.  The door was flung noisily back, and Major Coningsby strode in.