Lois opened the gate and stole into the lane with the air of a guilty child. She gave a little gasp as she came face to face with Saton, and picking up her skirts, seemed for a moment about to fly. He stood quite still—his face was sad—almost reproachful. She dropped her skirt and came slowly, doubtfully towards him.

“I have come,” she said. “I was forced to come. Oh, Mr. Saton! How could you?”

His features were wan. There were lines under his dark eyes. He was looking thin and nervous. His voice, too, had lost some of its pleasant qualities.

“My dear young lady,” he said, “my dear Lois, what do you mean? You don’t suppose—you can’t—that it was through me in any way that—that thing happened?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” she faltered, with white lips. “It was all so horrible. You pointed to him, and your eyes when you looked at him seemed to shine as though they were on fire. I saw him shrink away, and the color leave his cheeks. It was horrible!”

“But, Lois,” he protested, “you cannot imagine that by looking at a man I could help to kill him? I can’t explain what happened. As yet there are things in the world which no one can explain. This is one of them. I know a little more than most people. It is partly temperament, perhaps—partly study, but it is surely true that I can sometimes feel things coming. From the first moment I looked into Guerdon’s face at dinner-time, I knew what was going to happen. Out there in the hall I felt it. Once before in South America, I saw a man shoot himself. I tell you that I was certain of what he was going to do before I knew that he had even a revolver in his pocket. It comes to me, the knowledge of these things. I cannot be blamed for it. Some day I shall write the first text-book that has ever been written of a new science. I shall evolve the first few rudimentary laws, and after that the thing will go easily. Every generation will add to them. But, Lois, because I am the first, because I have seen a little further into the world than others, you are not going to look at me as though I were a murderer!”

She drew a little breath, a breath of relief. Her hand fell upon his arm.

“No!” she said. “I have been foolish. It is absurd to imagine that you could have brought that about by just wishing for it.”

“Why, even, should I have wished for it?” he asked. “Lord Guerdon was a stranger to me. As an acquaintance I found him pleasant enough. I had no grudge against him.”

She drew him a little way on down the lane.

“I must only stay for a few minutes,” she said. “If we walk down here we shall meet nobody. Do you know what Mr. Rochester has suggested?”

“No!” Saton answered. “What?”

“He says that Lord Guerdon had always been uneasily conscious of having seen you somewhere before. He says that at the very moment when he was stricken down, he seemed to remember!”

“That does not seem to me to be important,” Saton remarked.

“Can’t you understand?” she continued. “Mr. Rochester seems to think that Lord Guerdon had seen you somewhere under disgraceful circumstances. There! I’ve got it out now,” she added, with a wan little smile. “That is why he feels sure that somehow or other you did your best to help him toward death.”

“And the others?” Saton asked.

“Oh, it hasn’t been talked about!” she answered. “Everyone has left the house, you know. I only knew this through Mary.”

Saton smiled scornfully.

“My dear girl,” he said, “I know for a fact that Lord Guerdon was suffering from acute heart disease. He went about always with a letter in his pocket giving directions as to what should become of him if he were to die suddenly.”

“Is that really true?” she asked. “Oh, I am glad! Lord Penarvon said so, but no one else seemed sure.”

“There is no need, even for an inquest,” Saton continued. “I went to see the doctor this morning, and he told me so. I am very, very sorry,” he went on, taking her hand in his, “that such a thing should happen to spoil the memory of these few days. They have been wonderful days, Lois.”

She drew her hand quietly away.

“Yes!” she admitted. “They have been wonderful in many ways.”

“For you,” he continued, walking a little more slowly, and with his hands clasped behind him, “they have been, perhaps, just a tiny little leaf out of the book of your life. To me I fancy they have been something different. You see I have been a wanderer all my days. I have had no home, and I have had few friends. All the time I have had to fight, and there seems to have been no time for the gentler things, for the things that really make for happiness. Perhaps,” he continued, reflectively, “that is why I find it sometimes a little difficult to talk to you. You are so young and fresh and wonderful. Your feet are scarcely yet upon the threshold of the life whose scars I am bearing.”

“I am not so very young,” Lois said, “nor are you so very old.”

“And yet,” he answered, looking into her face, “there is a great gulf between us, a gulf, perhaps, of more than years. Miss Lois, I am not going to ask you too much, but I would like to ask you one thing. Have these days meant just a little to you also?”

She raised her eyes and looked him frankly in the face. They were honest brown eyes, a little clouded just now with some reflection of the vague trouble which was stirring in her heart.

“I will answer you frankly,” she said, “Yes, they have meant something to me! And yet, listen. I am going to say something unkind. There is something—I don’t know what it is—between us, which troubles me. Oh, I know that you are much cleverer than other men, and I would not have you different! Yet there is something else. Would you be very angry, I wonder, if I told the truth?”

“No!” he assured her. “Go on, please.”

“I feel sometimes,” she continued, “as though I could not trust you. There, don’t be angry,” she went on, laying her fingers on his arm. “I know how horrid it sounds, but it is there in my heart, and it is because I would like to believe, it is because I want there to be nothing between us of distrust, that I have told you.”

They walked slowly on, side by side. His face was turned a little from hers. She was bending forward, as though anxious to catch a glimpse of his expression. Through the case hardening of years, her voice for a moment seemed to have found its way back into the heart of the boy, to have brought him at least a momentary twinge as he realized, with a passing regret, the abstract beauty of the more simple ways in life. Those few minutes were effective enough. They helped his pose. The regret passed. A shadow of pain took its place. He came to a standstill and took her hands in his.

“Dear little girl,” he said, “perhaps you are right. I am not altogether honest. I am not in the least like the sort of man who ought to look at you and feel towards you as I have looked and felt during these wonderful days. But all of us have our weak spots, you know. I think that you found mine. Good-bye, little girl!”

She would have called him back, but he had no idea of lending himself to anything so inartistic. With head thrown back, he left the footpath and climbed the hill round which they had been walking. Not once did he look behind. Not once did he turn his head till he stood on the top of the rock-strewn eminence, his figure clearly outlined against the blue sky. Then he straightened himself and turned round, thinking all the time how wonderfully effective his profile must seem in that deep, soft light, if she should have the sense to look.

She did look. She was standing very nearly where he had left her. She was waving her handkerchief, beckoning him to come down. He raised his hand above his head as though in farewell, and turned slowly away. As soon as he was quite sure that he was out of sight, he took his cigarette case from his pocket and began to smoke!