more everything which had happened to-day was blotted out, and she went back to yesterday morning. Again she lived through those moments during which Oliver Tropenell had offered her what was to him the greatest thing man has it in him to bestow--love, even if illicit, unsanctified. And she had rejected the gift with a passion of scorn, spurning it as she would have done a base and unclean thing.Years and years ago, in her quiet, shadowed youth, she too had believed love to be the most precious, beautiful thing in life. Then, with marriage to Godfrey Pavely had come the conviction that love was not beautiful, but very, very ugly--at its best one of those dubious gifts to man by which old Dame Nature works out certain cunning designs of her own. And yet, when something of what she believed to be the truth had been uttered by her during that terrible tense exchange of words, she had seen how she, in her turn, had shocked, and even repelled, Oliver Tropenell.

Once more sobs welled up from her throat, once more she covered her face with her hands....At last, feeling worn out with the violence of an emotion which, unknown to her, vivified her whole being, she walked on till the fine Tudor front of the old house which was at once so little and so much her home, rose before her. It was an infinite comfort to know that Godfrey would not be there waiting for her, and that she would be able to make her way up alone through the sleeping house to the room which opened into her child's nursery.

CHAPTER V

Mrs. Tropenell, waiting for Oliver to come back, lost count of time, and yet not much more than half an hour had gone by before she heard the sound of a glazed door, which opened on to the garden from a distant part of the house, burst open.

In that sound she seemed to hear all the impatience, all the pain, all the frustrated longing she divined in her son. She got up from her chair and stood listening. Would he go straight upstairs--as she, in her stormy, passionate youth, would have done in his place?

But no--with a feeling of rushing, unreasoning joy she heard him coming across the hall. A moment later he walked through into the room and came and stood before her.

"Mother," he said, "it's a beautiful night. Would you care to come into the garden for a few minutes?"

As soon as they had stepped out of the French window into the darkness, she took his arm.

"You don't feel it cold?" he 

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