She had promised to marry him when it seemed the only way out of the difficulties which beset her, and now she was not honouring that promise.

While Peter Mallory was still waiting quietly for the wife he no longer loved to come back to him--keeping the door of his house open to her whenever she should choose to claim fulfilment of the pledges he had given the day he married her.
Nan leaned her head against the window-pane, realising that, whatever Roger's faults might he, she, too, had fallen short.
"Our troth, Nan.

Hang on to it--_hard_, when life seems a bit more uphill than usual." She could hear Peter's voice, steady and clear and reassuring, almost as she had heard it that night on the headland at Tintagel.

She felt her throat contract and a burning mist of tears blurred her vision.

For a moment she fought desperately against her weakness.