stick
to her and keep her."

"How long have you been married?"

"Nearly three years."

"What did your people say?"

"They will not have anything to do with us. They had a sort of family
council when they heard I was married, and cut us off altogether."

Helen began to pace up and down the room. "My good boy, what a mess!"
she said gently. "Who are your people?"

He could answer this. His parents, who were dead, had been in trade; his
sisters had married commercial travellers; his brother was a lay-reader.

"And your grandparents?"

Leonard told her a secret that he had held shameful up to now. "They
were just nothing at all," he said "agricultural labourers and that
sort."

"So! From which part?"

"Lincolnshire mostly, but my mother's father--he, oddly enough, came
from these parts round here."

"From this very Shropshire. Yes, that is odd. My mother's people were
Lancashire. But why do your brother and your sisters object to Mrs.
Bast?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Excuse me, you do know. I am not a baby. I can bear anything you tell
me, and the more you tell the more I shall be able to help. Have they
heard anything against her?"

He was silent.

"I think I have guessed now," said Helen very gravely.

"I don't think so, Miss Schlegel; I hope not."

"We must be honest, even over these things. I have guessed. I am
frightfully, dreadfully sorry, but it does not make the least difference
to me. I shall feel just the same to both of you. I blame, not your wife
for these things, but men."

Leonard left it at that--so long as she did not guess the man. She stood
at the window and slowly pulled up the blinds. The hotel looked over a
dark square. The mists had begun. When she turned back to him her eyes
were shining. "Don't you worry," he pleaded. "I can't bear that. We
shall be all right if I get work. If I could only get work--something
regular to do. Then it wouldn't be so bad again. I don't trouble after
books as I used. I can imagine that with regular work we should settle
down again. It stops one thinking."

"Settle down to what?"

"Oh, just settle down."

"And that's to be life!" said Helen, with a catch in her throat. "How
can you, with all the beautiful things to see and do--with music--with
walking at night--"

"Walking is well enough when a man's in work," he answered. "Oh, I did
talk a lot of nonsense once, but there's nothing like a bailiff in the
house to drive it out of you. When I saw