‘Does that matter?’

‘Well, of course.’

‘Suppose you didn’t go back.’ Simon spoke slowly.

‘Oh, don’t be silly.’ Alison made an impatient little movement. ‘One can’t solve things like that. It wouldn’t be my way, in any case. Whatever I decide to do, I must have it out frankly with Julian, and all the cards must be on the table.’

‘All the cards, Alison?’

She dropped her eyes.

‘Perhaps not quite all,’ she admitted in a low voice.

He didn’t say anything to that. And then he settled the bill and they went out to the car once more.

‘Will it take us very long to get home?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Not very long.’

They drove for a while in silence. Then: ‘Where are we now?’ Alison said nervously. ‘It’s so dark I can’t see anything.’

‘Don’t you recognise the outline of that mill over there against the sky?’

‘No. Ought I to?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’re quite near my cottage.’

‘Your cottage? Then we still have quite a long way to go.’

‘No,’ he told her. ‘It’s not more than an hour’s run in this car.’

‘Even so-’ she began.

‘We were so near that I thought it best to stop for ten minutes. You’ve looked so cold and tired for the last half-hour: you must have a hot drink of some sort.’

‘Oh, no,’ Alison said quickly. ‘Oh, no, I don’t want it, Simon, really.’

‘My dear’-Simon spoke quietly but firmly’-’it wouldn’t take very much at the moment to make you really ill, I insist on our stopping, if it’s only for a few minutes. I can’t risk your getting a chill when you’re in this state.’

Alison gave up the argument, but when they drew up outside the cottage and he led the way up the path, her heart was full of misgiving.

He switched on the lights as they came in, and put a match to the log fire.

‘Simon, it isn’t necessary. We shall only be here a few minutes,’ she protested.

But he only smiled and said:

‘Sit down and get warm I’ll not be a moment,’

‘Are the two-I mean-are your housekeeper and her husband not here?’

‘No. They’ll have gone home by now,’ Simon said calmly, and went off into the kitchen to see what he could find.

Alison drew near the fire and sat down. She pulled off her hat and ran her hand over her hair. She wished very much now that she had insisted on starting for home much sooner. It would be so terribly awkward having to explain to Julian. Almost impossible to do it without going into the whole miserable question of himself and Rosalie, and she felt utterly incapable of doing that to-night.

Suppose that scene with Rosalie had been only an irrepressible impulse of which he was now ashamed. Oh, it wasn’t likely, of course-but just suppose-

Alison gazed into the fire that was beginning to glow warmly now, and the light on her face made her look a little less strained.

Simon came back, carrying a tray with two steaming glasses.

‘Here you are.’ He handed her one of them.

‘What is it?’ She sniffed it doubtfully.

‘Never mind. Drink it up. It will do you good.’

Alison drank it obediently. It seemed to make the blood run more easily in her veins and to melt a little of the frozen despair round her heart.

‘Thank you. That’s much better.’

She looked up with a little smile at Simon… And suddenly he was kneeling beside her, his arm lightly round her waist.

‘Oh, Alison, I’ve thought of you so often like this. Sitting here smiling at me, with the firelight on your face.’

‘Simon, please-’ She moved nervously. But he went on as though she had not spoken.

‘I was a fool last time, I know. I thought Julian was so unimportant that it scarcely mattered his being here. I was wrong, of course. It was just plain hell having him near you in the place I love so much. But it’s different now. There’s no Julian to spoil things this time. Just ourselves-alone.’

Alison drew back as far as his arm would allow her.

‘You mustn’t talk to me like that, Simon. I don’t want it. Won’t you understand? Please, please let’s go now. It’s so late already, and we’re still a long way from home.’

And at that Simon raised his face to hers with a smile. For the first time, she saw, his eyes were brilliant and sparkling; that strange opaque quality was gone. He spoke quite gently, with a little under-current of amusement in his voice.

‘But you don’t really suppose I’m going to let you go away from here to-night, do you?’ he said.

CHAPTER X

IN one quick movement Alison was on her feet, all the vague, half-defined misery of the last hours swamped by the present crisis.

‘I suppose you’re trying to frighten me,’ she said breathlessly. ‘It’s not very kind of you, Simon, especially just now, when you know I’m so worried.’

‘I’m not trying to frighten you.’ He too, got to his feet, and towered over her as she backed against the wall. ‘I’m simply taking matters out of your hands-making the decision for you.’

‘But you can’t.’ She spoke sharply because she was so much afraid.

‘On the contrary, my dear, I can. That is exactly why you are here.’

‘You mean you arranged this? You did it on purpose?’

Simon smiled faintly.

‘It would have been asking a little too much of chance that I should have it all done for me,’ he said.

‘But it’s ridiculous.’ Alison was trying desperately to hold off the full realisation of her position. ‘It’s too-too utterly melodramatic’

‘Melodrama and fact are quite often the same thing,’ Simon said drily. I’m sorry if I seem to be playing the part of the villain. But I’ve been patient, Alison, for quite a long time-and I am not a patient man by nature.’

‘No,’ she said bitterly. ‘No, I’ve gathered that, You think that to want a thing is the best possible reason for taking it.’

‘It’s a very good reason, Alison, in this imperfect world.’

‘Simon,’ she said appealingly, ‘you don’t really mean the dreadful things you’re saying, do you? Think again.’ She put out her hand and took his for a moment, but, at the way his expression changed when she touched him, she drew back again quickly.

He put his hands behind him, and she saw from the sudden tensing of his muscles how hard he was gripping them together. Somehow, that effort to put some sort of curb on his passion frightened her as much as everything else.

‘Please, please don’t prolong this hateful scene,’ she begged. ‘Take me back home, Simon. I-’’

‘No!’

The monosyllable was curt, rude, and final. It drove the words of protest from Alison’s lips, so that she stood there staring at him in scared silence.

‘Think what you’re asking me to do,’ he said roughly. ‘I’ve thought of you here, dreamt of you here, longed for you here, until I believed I should go mad. Now I have you here-and you ask me to let you go. Now, when we’re alone together and there’s nobody in the whole world to say no-except you yourself. And I trunk I shall know how to turn your "no" into "yes".’

‘You will not!’ With a sudden desperate movement she tried to pass him. But he had her at once, catching her against him in an access of emotion that found vent in a triumphant little laugh.

‘It isn’t any good, you know. You’re mine by every right, and you can’t get away from me.’

She didn’t say anything, only struggled silently, while he held her lightly but irresistibly. She didn’t know whether it were her heart or his that was beating in those slow, heavy thuds, but it seemed to her the only sound in the world just then.

There was silence in the rest of the house, silence outside. Miles and miles of silence-and she and Simon alone in the midst of it.

She had been a fool ever to come with him, an utter fool. And now she had only herself to thank. She ought to have remembered that instinct which had warned her right from the beginning that there was danger in being alone with him.