To return to Derrick Dene. When Isabel had left the van he lay, with a
frown on his face, thinking sadly and troubled by a somewhat
unreasonable remorse. He was not a vain man, but he knew that, all
unwittingly, he had gained the love of this dark-browed, passionate
girl. She was very beautiful; she had nursed him with the tenderness of
a sister, a mother, a wife. Why should he not accept the gift which the
gods were offering him? Why should he not make her his wife? Even as he
put the question, the answer rose to confront him. He was in love with
another woman, a girl he had seen once or twice only in his life--the
girl at Brown's Buildings.

It was absurd, of course. He might never meet her again; it was more
than probable that by this time some other man had discovered so great a
prize; she might be engaged, married. The chances were that, though he
had thought of her every day since he had left her, she had well-nigh
forgotten him, or, at the best, thought of him as a foolish young man
who had sacrificed himself for a mistaken sense of chivalry, the man
whom she, a slip of a girl, had saved from suicide. Why, he told
himself, any feeling she must have for him must be that of contempt. All
the same, he loved her, and therefore this other woman could be nothing
to him.