for--anyone but me. I've told Lisa. It doesn't matter our speaking like
this before her. I asked you to wait for my promise for a little while,
until I could be quite sure you didn't think of Miss de Renzie as--some
people fancied you did. If you wanted to see her, I said you must go,
and you laughed at the idea. Yet the very next morning, by the first
train, you start."

"Only because I am obliged to," I hazarded in spite of the Foreign
Secretary and his precautions. But I was punished for my lack of them by
making matters worse instead of better for myself.

"Obliged to!" she echoed. "Then there's something you must settle with
her, before you can be--free."

The guard was shutting the carriage doors. In another minute I should
lose the train. And I must not lose the train. For her future and mine,
as well as Maxine's, I must not.

"Dearest," I said hurriedly, "I am free. There's no question of freedom.
Yet I shall have to go. I hold you to your word. Trust me."

"Not if you go to her--this day of all days." The words were wrung from
the poor child's lips, I could see, by sheer anguish, and it was like
death to me that I should have to cause her this anguish, instead of
soothing it.

"You shall. You must," I commanded, rather than implored. "Good-bye,
darling--precious one. I shall think of you every instant, and I shall
come back to you to-morrow."