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A long deep note boomed through the house, echoing weirdly through the intense silence. Carey put up his hand without speaking, and stripped off his mask. He crumpled it into a ball as the second note struck, and looked at her. She had not moved. He waited silently.

At the sixth note she made a sudden, almost passionate gesture and rose. Carey remained motionless, watching her. Swiftly she turned, and began to walk away from him. He leaned forward. His eyes were fixed upon her.

Three more strokes! She stopped abruptly, turning back as if he had spoken. Moving slowly, and still masked, she came back to him. He met her under a lamp. His face was very pale, but his eyes were steady and piercingly keen. He took her hand, bending over it till his lips touched her glove.

“I know you now,” he said, his voice very low.

Three more strokes, and silence.

A ripple of laughter suddenly ran through the house, a gay voice called for three cheers, and as though a spell had been lifted the merriment burst out afresh in tune to the lilting dance-music.

Carey straightened himself slowly, still holding the slender hand in his. Her mask had gone at last, and he stood face to face with the woman of his dream–the woman whose hard-won security he had only that morning pledged himself to shatter.

VII

“You know me,” she said.

“Yes; I know you. And I know your secret, too.”

The words sounded stern. He was putting strong restraint upon himself.

She faced him without flinching, her look as steady as his own. And yet again it was to Carey as though he stood in the presence of a queen. She did not say a word.

“Will you believe me,” he said slowly, “when I tell you that I would give all I have not to know it?”

She raised her beautiful brows for a moment, but still she said nothing.

He let her hand go. “I was on the point of searching to the world’s end for you,” he said. “But since I have found you here of all places, I am bound to take advantage of it. Forgive me, if you can!”

He saw a gleam of apprehension in her eyes.

“What is it you want to say to me?” she asked.

He passed the question by.

“You know me, I suppose?”

She bent her head.

“I fancied it was you from the first. When I saw your hand at supper, I knew.”

“And you tried to avoid me?”

“When you have something to conceal, it is wise to avoid anyone connected with it.”

She answered him very quietly, but he knew instinctively that she was fighting him with her whole strength. It was almost more than he could bear.

“Believe me,” he said, “I am not a man to wantonly betray a woman’s secret. I have kept yours faithfully for years. But when within the last few days I came to know who you were, and that your husband, Major Coningsby, was contemplating making a second marriage, I was in honour bound to speak.”

“You told him?” She raised her eyes for a single instant, and he read in them a reproach unutterable.

His heart smote him. What had she endured, this woman, before taking that final step to cut herself off from the man whose name she had borne? But he would not yield an inch. He was goaded by pitiless necessity.

“I told him,” he answered. “But I had no means of proving what I said. And he refused to believe me.”

“And now?” she almost whispered.

He heard the note of tragedy in the words, and he braced himself to meet her most desperate resistance.

“Before I go further,” he said, “let me tell you this! Slight though you may consider our acquaintance to be, I have always felt–I have always known–that you are a good woman.”

She made a quick gesture of protest.

“Would a good woman have left the man who saved her life lying ill in a strange land while she escaped with her miserable freedom?”