Beauchamp bade her go, and not be away more than five minutes; and then he would drive to the hotel for the luggage.

She scanned him for a look of ingenuousness that might be trusted, and laughed in her heart at her credulity for expecting it of a man in such a case.  She saw Renee sitting stonily, too proudly self-respecting to put on a mask of flippant ease.  These lovers might be accomplices in deceiving her; they were not happy ones, and that appeared to her to be some assurance that she did well in obeying him.

Beauchamp closed the door on her.  He walked back to Renee with a thoughtful air that was consciously acted; his only thought being—­now she knows me!

Renee looked up at him once.  Her eyes were unaccusing, unquestioning.

With the violation of the secresy of her flight she had lost her initiative and her intrepidity.  The world of human eyes glared on her through the windows of the two she had been exposed to, paralyzing her brain and caging her spirit of revolt.  That keen wakefulness of her self-defensive social instinct helped her to an understanding of her lover’s plan to preserve her reputation, or rather to give her a corner of retreat in shielding the worthless thing—­twice detested as her cloak of slavery coming from him!  She comprehended no more.  She was a house of nerves crowding in against her soul like fiery thorns, and had no space within her torture for a sensation of gratitude or suspicion; but feeling herself hurried along at lightning speed to some dreadful shock, her witless imagination apprehended it in his voice:  not what he might say, only the sound.  She feared to hear him speak, as the shrinking ear fears a thunder at the cavity; yet suspense was worse than the downward-driving silence.

The pang struck her when he uttered some words about Mrs. Culling, and protection, and Roland.

She thanked him.

So have common executioners been thanked by queenly ladies baring their necks to the axe.

He called up the pain he suffered to vindicate him; and it was really an agony of a man torn to pieces.

‘I have done the best.’

This dogged and stupid piece of speech was pitiable to hear from Nevil Beauchamp.

‘You think so?’ said she; and her glass-like voice rang a tremour in its mildness that swelled through him on the plain submissive note, which was more assent than question.

‘I am sure of it.  I believe it.  I see it.  At least I hope so.’

‘We are chiefly led by hope,’ said Renee.

‘At least, if not!’ Beauchamp cried.  ’And it’s not too late.  I have no right—­I do what I can.  I am at your mercy.  Judge me later.  If I am ever to know what happiness is, it will be with you.  It’s not too late either way.  There is Roland—­my brother as much as if you were my wife!’

He begged her to let him have Roland’s exact address.

She named the regiment, the corps d’armee, the postal town, and the department.