“I know you will think I am being both dishonourable and disloyal,” she wrote, after she had first stated her decision quite clearly and simply.  “But to me it seems I am doing the only thing possible in loyalty to the man I love.  And in a way it is loyal to you, too, Roger, because—­as you have known from the beginning—­I could never give you all that a man has a right to expect from the women he marries.  One can’t ‘share out’ love in bits.  I’ve learned, now, that love means all or nothing, and as I cannot give you all, it must be nothing.  And of this you may be sure—­perhaps it may make you feel that I have behaved less badly to you—­I am not breaking off our engagement in order to marry someone else.  I shall never marry anyone, now.”

Nan read it through, then slipped it into an envelope and sealed it.  When she had directed it to “Roger Trenby, Esq.,” she leaned back in her chair, feeling curiously tired, but conscious of a sense of peace and tranquillity that had been absent from her since the day on which she had promised to marry Roger. . . .  And the next day, by the shattered Lovers’ Bridge, Peter had carried her in his arms across the stream and kissed her hair.  She had known then, known very surely, that love had come to her—­Peter loved her, and his slightest touch meant happiness so poignantly sweet as to be almost unbearable.  Only the knowledge had come too late.

But now—­now she was free!  Though she would never know the supreme joy of mating with the man she loved, she had at least escaped the prison which the wrong man’s love can make for a woman.  Just as no other man than Peter would ever hold her heart, so henceforth no kiss but his would ever touch her lips.  But for Peter the burden would be heavier.  It would be different—­harder.  Could she not guess how infinitely harder?  And there was nothing in the world which might avail to lighten that burden.  Only, perhaps, later on, it might comfort him to know that, though in this world they could never come together, the woman he loved was his completely, that she had surrendered nothing of herself to any other man.

She picked up her letter to Roger and made her way downstairs, intending to drop it herself into the post-box at the gates of Mallow.  Once it had left her hands for the close guardianship of that scarlet tablet streaked against the roadside wall she would feel more at ease.

As she turned the last bend of the stairs she came upon an agitated little group of people clustering round Sandy McBain, who had apparently only recently arrived.  Her hand tightened on the banister.  Why had everyone collected in the hall?  Even one or two scared-looking servants were discernible in the background, and on every face sat a strange, unusual gravity.  Nan felt as though someone had suddenly slipped a band round her heart and were drawing it tighter and tighter.

Nobody seemed to notice her as with reluctant, dragging footsteps she descended the remainder of the staircase.  Then Ralph caught sight of her and exclaimed:  “Here’s Nan!” and her name ran through the group in a shocked murmur of repetition, followed by a quick, hushed silence.