voice, a trifle shaken by reason of the sudden tensity which had crept into the atmosphere, she repeated the brief lyric:

  "But sometimes God on His great white Throne
    Looks down from the Heaven above,
  And lays in the hands that are empty
    The tremulous Star of Love."

As she spoke the last verse Nan's voice took on a tender, instinctive note of consolation. Had she been looking she would have seen Peter Mallory's hand clench itself as though to crush down some sudden, urgent motion. But she was gazing straight in front of her into the softly lit radiance of the car.

"Only sometimes there isn't any star, and your hands would be 'outstretched in vain,' as the song says," he commented.

"Oh, I hope not!" cried Nan. "Try to believe they wouldn't be!"

Mallory uttered a short laugh.

"I'm afraid it's no case for 'believing.' It's hard fact."

Nan remained silent. There was an undertone so bitter in his voice that she felt as though her poor little efforts at consolation were utterly trivial and futile to meet whatever tragedy lay behind the man's curt speech. It seemed as though he read her thought, for he turned to her quickly with that charming smile of his.

"You'd make a topping pal," he said. And Nan knew that in some indefinable way she had comforted him.

They drove on in silence for some time and when, later on, they began to talk again it was on ordinary commonplace topics, by mutual consent avoiding any by-way that might lead them back to individual matters. The depths which had been momentarily stirred settled down once more into misleading tranquillity.

In due course they arrived at Abbencombe, and the car purred up to the station, where the Chattertons' limousine, sent to meet Nan, still waited for her. The transit from one car to the other was quickly effected, and Peter Mallory stood bareheaded at the door of the limousine.

"Good-bye," he said. "And thank you, little pal. I hope you'll never find your moon out of reach."

Nan held out her hand. In the grey dusk she felt him carry it to his lips.

"Good-bye," he said once more.