Throughout the whole journey from Exeter to London he had been revolving the matter in his mind, thinking . . . thinking . . . thinking . . . to the ceaseless throb and hum of the train as it raced over the metals, and now he felt almost as though his brain would burst.

Peter pushed him down into a chair.

“You shall tell me all about it in a minute,” he said quietly.  Crossing the room to a cupboard in the wall, he took down a decanter and glass and poured out a stiff dose of whisky.

“There—­drink that,” he said, squirting in the soda-water.  “You’ll be all right directly,” he added.

In a few minutes he had drawn the whole story from Sandy’s eager lips, and as he listened his eyes grew curiously hard and determined.

“So we’ve just one chance—­the house in Westminster,” he commented.  “We’ll go there, Sandy.  At once.”

They made their way quickly downstairs and out into the street.  Hailing a passing taxi, Peter directed the man to drive to Maryon’s house, where he enquired for Rooke in a perfectly ordinary manner, as though expecting to find him in, and was told by the maid who opened the door that Mr. Rooke had only just arrived and had gone out again immediately, but that she expected him back at any moment.

“Then I’ll wait,” said Peter, easily.  “Miss Davenant’s waiting here, too, isn’t she?”

An odd look of surprise crossed the girl’s face.  She had thought—­well, what matter what she had thought since it was evident there was really no secret about the lady’s presence in her master’s house.  These people obviously expected to meet her there.  Perhaps there were others coming as well, to an appointed rendezvous for a restaurant supper party or something of the sort.

“Yes, sir,” she answered civilly, “Miss Davenant is in the studio.”

Sandy heard Peter catch his breath at the reply as though some kind of tension had been suddenly slackened.  Then the maid threw open the studio door and they saw Nan sitting in a chair beside a recently lit fire, her hands clasped round her knees.

She turned at the sound of their entrance and, as her eyes fell upon Peter, she rose slowly to her feet, staring at him, while every drop of colour drained away from her face.

“Peter!” she cried wonderingly.  “Peter!” Her hands groped for the back of the chair from which she had risen and clung to it.

But her eyes never left his face.  There was an expression in them as of the dawning of a great joy struggling against amazed unbelief, so that Sandy felt as though he had seen into some secret holy place.  Turning, he stumbled out of the room, leaving those two who loved alone together.

“Peter, you’re asking me to do the hardest thing in the world,” said Nan at last.

She had listened in heavy silence while he urged her to return.

“I know I am,” he answered.  “And do you think it’s—­easy—­for me to ask it?  To ask you to go back? . . .  If it were possible. . . .  Dear God!  If it were possible to take you away, would I have left it undone?”