Nan took her seat obediently and reflected that there was something tremendously reliable about this man.  He had a genius for appearing at the critical moment and for promptly clearing away all difficulties.  Almost unconsciously she was forced into comparing him with Maryon Rooke—­Rooke, with his curious fascination and detached, half-cynical outlook on life, his beautiful ideals and—­Nan’s inner self flinched from the acknowledgment—­his frequent fallings-short of them.  Unwillingly she had to confess to the fact that Maryon was something both of poseur and actor, with an ineradicable streak of cynicism in his composition added to a strange undercurrent of passion which he rarely allowed to carry him away.  Apart from this he was genuine, creative artist.  Whereas Peter Mallory, beautifully unself-conscious, was helpful in a simple, straightforward way that gave one a feeling of steadfast reliance upon him.  And she liked his whimsical smile.

She was more than ever sure of the latter fact when he joined her in the car, remarking smilingly: 

“This is a great bit of luck for me.  I should have had a long drive of twenty-five miles all by myself if you hadn’t been left high and dry as well.”

“It’s very nice of you to call it luck,” replied Nan, as the car slid away into the winter dusk of the afternoon.  “Are you usually a lucky person?  You look as if you might be.”

Under the light of the tiny electric bulb which illuminated the car she saw his face alter suddenly.  The lines on either side the sensitive mouth seemed to deepen and a weary gravity showed for an instant in his grey-blue eyes.

“Appearances are known to be deceitful, aren’t they?” he answered, with an attempt at lightness.  “No, I’m afraid I’ve not been specially lucky.”

“In love or in cards?”

The words left Nan’s lips unthinkingly, almost before she was aware, and she regretted them the moment they were spoken.  She felt he must inevitably suspect her of a prying curiosity.

“I’m lucky at cards,” he replied quietly.

There was something in his voice that appealed to Nan’s quick, warm sympathies.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she said, rather tremulously.  “Perhaps, some day, the other kind of luck will come, too.”

“That’s out of the question”—­harshly.

“Do you know a little poem called ’Empty Hands’?” she asked.  “I set it to music one day because I liked the words so much.  Listen.”

In a low voice, a trifle shaken by reason of the sudden tensity which had crept into the atmosphere, she repeated the brief lyric: 

  “But sometimes God on His great white Throne
    Looks down from the Heaven above,
  And lays in the hands that are empty
    The tremulous Star of Love.”

As she spoke the last verse Nan’s voice took on a tender, instinctive note of consolation.  Had she been looking she would have seen Peter Mallory’s hand clench itself as though to crush down some sudden, urgent motion.  But she was gazing straight in front of her into the softly lit radiance of the car.