As she ceased playing Maryon Rooke spoke musingly.

“It’s a queer world,” he said.  “What a man wants he can’t have.  He sees the good gifts and may not take them.  Or, if he takes the one he wants the most—­he loses all the rest.  Fame and love and life—­the great god Circumstance arranges all these little matters for us. . . .  And mighty badly sometimes!  And that’s why I can’t—­why I mustn’t—­”

He broke off abruptly, checking what he had intended to say.  Nan felt as though a door had been shut in her face.  This man had a rare faculty for implying everything and saying nothing.

“I don’t understand,” she said rather low.

“An artist isn’t a free agent—­not free to take the things life offers,” he answered steadily.  “He’s seen ‘the far Moon’ with the Dreamer’s eyes, and that’s probably all he’ll ever see of it.  His ‘empty hands’ may not even grasp at the star.”

He had adapted the verses very cleverly to suit his purpose.  With a sudden flash of intuition Nan understood him, and the fear which had knocked at her heart, when Penelope had assumed that there was a definite understanding between herself and Rooke, knocked again.  Poetically wrapped up, he was in reality handing her out her conge—­frankly admitting that art came first and love a poor second.

He twisted his shoulders irritably.

“Last talks are always odious!” he flung out abruptly.

“Last?” she queried.  Her fingers were trifling nervously with the pages of an album of songs that rested against the music-desk.

He did not look at her.

“Yes,” he said quietly.  “I’m going away.  I leave for Paris to-morrow.”

There was a crash of jangled notes as the album suddenly pitched forward on to the keys of the piano.

With an impetuous movement he leaned towards her and caught her hand in his.

“Nan!” he said hoarsely, “Nan!  Do you care?”

But the next moment he had released her.

“I’m a fool!” he said.  “What’s the use of drawing a boundary line and then overstepping it?”

“And where”—­Nan’s voice was very low—­“where do you draw the line?”

He stood motionless a moment.  Then he gestured a line with his hand—­a line between, himself and her.

“There,” he said briefly.

She caught her breath.  But before she could make any answer he was speaking again.

“You’ve been very good to me, Nan—­pushed the gate of Paradise at least ajar.  And if it closes now, I’ve no earthly right to grumble. . . .  After all, I’m only one amongst your many friends.”  He reclaimed her hands and drew them against his breast.  “Good-bye, beloved,” he said.  His voice sounded rough and uneven.

Instinctively Nan clung to him.  He released himself very gently—­very gently but inexorably.

“So it’s farewell, Sun-kissed.”

Mechanically she shook hands and her lips murmured some vague response.  She heard the door of the flat close behind him, followed almost immediately by the clang of the iron grille as the lift-boy dragged it across.  It seemed to her as though a curious note of finality sounded in the metallic clamour of the grille—­a grim resemblance to the clank of keys and shooting of bolts which cuts the outer world from the prisoner in his cell.