She stood very still, waiting for his answer.  Right or wrong, in that moment of utter sacrifice of self, she had risen to the best that was in her.  She was willing to lay all on love’s altar—­body, soul, and spirit, and that honour of the Davenants which she had been so schooled to keep untarnished.  Her pledge to Roger, her uncle’s faith in her—­all these must be tossed into the fire to make her gift complete.  But the agony in Peter’s face when the mask had fallen from it had temporarily destroyed for her all values except the value of love.

Peter took the fluttering, outstretched fingers and laid his lips against them.  Then he relinquished them slowly, lingeringly.  Passion had died out of his face.  His eyes held only a grave tenderness, and the sternly sweet expression of his mouth recalled to Nan the man as she had first known him, before love, terrible and beautiful, had come into their lives to destroy them.

“I should never take you, dear,” he said at last.  “A man doesn’t hurt the thing he loves—­not in his right senses.  What he’ll do when the madness is on him—­only his own soul knows.”

She caught his arm impetuously.

“Peter, let me come!  I’m not afraid of being hurt—­not if we’re together.  It’s only the hurt of being without you that I can’t bear. . . .  Oh, I know what you’re thinking”—­as she read the negation in his face—­“that I should regret it, that I should mind what people said.  Dear, if I can give you happiness, things like that simply wouldn’t count. . . .  Ah, believe me, Peter!”

He looked down at her with the tenderness one accords a child, ignorantly pleading to have its way.  He knew Nan’s temperament—­knew that, in spite of all her courage, when the moment of exaltation had passed not even love itself could make up for the bitterness of its price, if bought at such a cost.  He pictured her exposed to the slights of those whose position was still unassailable, waiting drearily at Continental watering-places till the decree absolute should be pronounced, and finally, restored to respectability in so far as marriage with him could make it possible, but always liable to be unpleasantly reminded, as she went through life, that there had been a time when she had outraged convention.  It was unthinkable!  It would break her utterly.

“Even if that were all, it still wouldn’t be possible,” he said gently.  “You don’t know what you would have to face.  And I couldn’t let you face it.  But it isn’t all. . . .  There’s honour, dear, and duty. . . .”

Her gaze met his in dreary interrogation.

“Then—­then, you’ll go away?” Her voice faltered, broke.

“Yes, I shall go away . . . out of your life.”

He fell silent a moment.  Then, with an effort, he went on: 

“This is good-bye.  We mustn’t see each other again—­”

“No, no,” she broke in a little wildly.  “Don’t go, Peter, I can’t bear it.”  She clung to him, repeating piteously:  “Don’t go . . . don’t go!”