As he turned, still smiling and self-possessed, Eileen whispered rapidly:  “Don’t go.  I care for you too much to ask it.”

He said under his breath:  “Dearest, you cannot understand.”

“Yes—­I do!  Don’t go.  Philip—­don’t go near—­her—­”

“I must.”

“If you do—­if you go—­h-how can you c-care for me as you say you do?—­when I ask you not to—­when I cannot endure—­to—­”

She turned swiftly and stared across at Alixe; and Alixe, unsteady in the flushed brilliancy of her youthful beauty, half rose in her seat and stared back.

Instinctively the young girl’s hand tightened on Selwyn’s arm:  “She—­she is beautiful!” she faltered; but he turned and led her from the table, following Austin, his sister, and Lansing; and she clung to him almost convulsively when he halted on the edge of the lawn.

“I must go back,” he whispered—­“dearest—­dearest—­I must.”

“T-to Gerald?  Or—­her?”

But he only muttered:  “They don’t know what they’re doing.  Let me go, Eileen”—­gently detaching her fingers, which left her hands lying in both of his.

She said, looking up at him:  “If you go—­if you go—­whatever time you return—­no matter what hour—­knock at my door.  Do you promise?  I shall be awake.  Do you promise?”

“Yes,” he said with a trace of impatience—­the only hint of his anger at the prospect of the duty before him.

So she went away with Nina and Austin and Boots; and Selwyn turned back, sauntering quietly toward the table where already the occupants had apparently forgotten him and the episode in the riotous gaiety increasing with the accession of half a dozen more men.

When Selwyn approached, Neergard saw him first, stared at him, and snickered; but he greeted everybody with smiling composure, nodding to those he knew—­a trifle more formally to Mrs. Ruthven—­and, coolly pulling up a chair, seated himself beside Gerald.

“Boots has driven home with the others,” he said in a low voice; “I’m going back in the motor-boat with you.  Don’t worry about Austin.  Are you ready?”

The boy had evidently let the wine alone, or else fright had sobered him, for he looked terribly white and tired:  “Yes,” he said, “I’ll go when you wish.  I suppose they’ll never forgive me for this.  Come on.”

“One moment, then,” nodded Selwyn; “I want to speak to Mrs. Ruthven.”  And, quietly turning to Alixe, and dropping his voice to a tone too low for Neergard to hear—­for he was plainly attempting to listen: 

“You are making a mistake; do you understand?  Whoever is your hostess—­wherever you are staying—­find her and go there before it is too late.”

She inclined her pretty head thoughtfully, eyes on the wine-glass which she was turning round and round between her slender fingers.  “What do you mean by ’too late’?” she asked.  “Don’t you know that everything is too late for me now?”