“You, too, Philip,” murmured the wounded man.

Ailsa’s violet eyes opened in surprise at the implied intimacy between these men whom she had vaguely understood were anything but friends.  But she remained coldly aloof, controlling even a shiver of astonishment when Colonel Arran’s hand, which held hers, groped also for Berkley’s, and found it.

Then with an effort he turned his head and looked at them.

“I have long known that you loved each other,” he whispered.  “It is a happiness that God sends me as well as you.  If it be His will that I—­do not recover, this makes it easy for me.  If He wills it that I live, then, in His infinite mercy, He also gives me the reason for living.”

Icy cold, Ailsa’s hand lay there, limply touching Berkley’s; the sick man’s eyes were upon them.

“Philip!”

“Sir?”

“My watch is hanging from a nail on the wall.  There is a chamois bag hanging with it.  Give—­it—­to me.”

And when it lay in his hand he picked at the string, forced it open, drew out a key, and laid it in Berkley’s hand with a faint smile.

“You remember, Philip?”

“Yes, sir.”

The wounded man looked at Ailsa wistfully.

“It is the key to my house, dear.  One day, please God, you and Philip will live there.” . . .  He closed his eyes, groping for both their hands, and retaining them, lay silent as though asleep.

Berkley’s palm burned against hers; she never stirred, never moved a muscle, sitting there as though turned to stone.  But when the wounded man’s frail grasp relaxed, cautiously, silently, she freed her fingers, rose, looked down, listening to his breathing, then, without a glance at Berkley, moved quietly toward the door.

He was behind her a second later, and she turned to confront him in the corridor lighted by a single window.

“Will you tell me what has changed you?” he said.

“Something which that ghastly farce cannot influence!” she said, hot faced, eyes brilliant with anger.  “I loved Colonel Arran enough to endure it—­endure your touch—­which shames—­defiles—­which—­which outrages every instinct in me!”

Breathless, scornful, she drew back, still facing him.

“The part you have played in my life!” she said bitterly—­“think it over.  Remember what you have been toward me from the first—­a living insult!  And when you remember—­all—­remember that in spite of all I—­I loved you—­stood before you in the rags of my pride—­all that you had left me to clothe myself!—­stood upright, unashamed, and acknowledged that I loved you!”

She made a hopeless gesture.

“Oh, you had all there was of my heart!  I gave it; I laid it beside my pride, under your feet.  God knows what madness was upon me—­and you had flung my innocence into my face!  And you had held me in your embrace, and looked me in the eyes, and said you would not marry me.  And I still loved you!”