He drew her hands into his.

“Not really lucky to be my wife, Nan,” he said quietly, “because I can give her so little.  Everything that matters—­my love, my utter faith, all my heart and soul—­are yours, now and for ever.”

Her hands quivered in his clasp.  She dared not trust herself to speak, lest she should give way and by her own weakness try his strength too hard.

“Good-bye, dear,” he said with infinite tenderness.  Then, with a ghost of the old whimsical smile that reminded her sharply, cruelly, of the Peter of happier days:  “We seem always to be saying good-bye, don’t we?  And then Fate steps in and brings us together again.  But this time it is really good-bye—­good-bye for always.  When we meet again—­if we do—­I shall have Celia to care for, and you will be Roger’s wife.”

He stooped his head and pressed his lips against first one soft palm and then the other.  She heard him cross the room and the door close behind him.  With a little cry she covered her face with her hands, crushing the palms where his kiss had lain against her shaking lips.

CHAPTER XXIX

ON THIN ICE

May had slipped away into the ranks of the dead months, and June—­a June resplendent with sunshine and roses—­had taken her place.

Nan, an open letter in her hand, sat perched on the low wall of the quadrangular court at Mallow, delicately sniffing the delicious salt tang which wafted up from the expanse of blue sea that stretched in front of her.  Physically she felt a different being from the girl who had lain on a couch in London and grumbled fretfully at the houses opposite.  A month at Mallow had practically restored her health.  The good Cornish cream and butter had done much towards rounding the sharpened contours of her face, and to all outward appearance she was the same Nan who had stayed at Mallow almost a year ago.

But within herself she knew that a great gulf lay fixed between those insouciant, long-ago days and this golden, scented morning.  The world had not altered.  June was still vivid and sweet with the rapture of summer.  It was she herself who had changed.

Looking backward, she almost wondered how she had endured the agony of love and suffering and sacrifice which had been compressed into a single year.  She wished sometimes that they had let her die when she was so ill—­let her slip easily out of the world while the delirium of fever still closed the door on conscious knowledge of all that she had lost.  It seemed foolish to make so much effort to hold on to life when everything which had made it lovely and pleasant and desirable had gone out of it.  Yet there were still moments, as to-day, when the sheer beauty of the earth so thrilled her that for the time being life was a thousand times worth living.

And behind it all—­back of the tears and suffering which seemed so cruelly incomprehensible—­there lay always the inscrutable and splendid purposes of God, and the Ultimate Light beyond.  Lord St. John had taught her that.  It had been his own courageous, unshakable belief.  But now he had gone from her she found her faith faltering.  It was too difficult—­well-nigh impossible—­to hold fast to the big uplift of such thought and faith as had been his.