Afterwards

"No." Cheniston's face had lost all its boyishness; it looked haggard, unhappy, old. "Possibly not. But when one has made a mistake of so tragic a nature I should have thought one would have been only too ready to pay the price of one's miscalculation."

For a second Anstice stared at him silently.

"Just so," he said at last, very quietly, taking his hands out of his pockets for the first time. "The question is, What is the price? And do you really think that to repudiate a debt by running away from one's creditor, so to speak, is as satisfactory a settlement as to pay it coin by coin, each coin drawn from one's own heart's blood?"

This time it was Cheniston who stared at him in non-comprehension. Presently he said slowly: "I think I understand. You mean the strongest man is the one who can stand up to any situation with which life confronts him; can pay a debt to the uttermost farthing though it may make him bankrupt in the doing. That is what you mean?"

"Yes," said Anstice steadily. "That is what I mean. God only knows what the price may be, and whether I shall have the coin in my treasury when I'm called on to pay ... if I am so called upon. And by the way"--his face hardened--"do I understand you to mean that I'm your debtor--that it is to you that the price may--one day--be paid?"

Cheniston made no reply. The hostility had suddenly died out of his eyes; and for a moment Anstice caught a glimpse of the man Hilda Ryder had loved.

"You know"--his square fingers played absently with his cigarette case--"I have loved Hilda Ryder all my life. We were brought up together as children; I was a few years older than she ... by the way, how old are you?"

Surprised, Anstice owned to his twenty-nine years.

"And I am twenty-six. Hilda was twenty-four last year. Well, all my life she has been the one--the only--woman in the world for me. We've been engaged four years; her people wouldn't sanction it till she was twenty, but we always knew we were made for one another, and Hilda used to say she would rather be my wife than marry the richest, the most famous man on earth!"

Suddenly Anstice heard her soft voice in his ear.

"To marry him ... perhaps in time to bear his children, would be to me the most glorious destiny in the world...."