d if you meant it."

She sat bolt upright and stared at him.

"Why?" she demanded breathlessly.

"Because if you meant it you could take care _not_ to mean it, silly.
You'd look out. But you don't mean it. You didn't mean to hurt me then
till you did it. It's much worse for you."

She drew a long breath.

"Oh, Christopher dear, how clever you are. No-one ever understood that
before. They all say, 'well, anyhow, you don't mean it,' as if that
made it better."

"Stupid, of course it's harder to help what you don't mean than what
you do."

"But I can't help it."

Christopher gave her a little shake. "Don't be silly. You will have to
help it, only it's harder. You can't go on like that when you are
big--ladies don't--none I've seen. It's only----" he stopped.

"Only what?"

"Women in the street. At least--some, I've seen them. They fight and
scream and get black eyes and get drunk."

"Christopher, you are hateful!" She flared up with hot cheeks and put
her hand over his mouth. "I'm not like that, you horrid boy. Say I'm
not."

"I didn't say you were," said Christopher with faint exasperation. "I
said it reminded me--your temper. Come along in."

She followed very unwillingly, more conscious than he was of his
disfigured face.

And Renata met them in the hall and saw it and got pink, but said
nothing till Patricia had gone upstairs. Christopher was slipping away
too--he never found much to say to Mrs. Aston--and of late less than
ever. However, she stopped him.

"Have you been quarrelling, Christopher?" she asked deprecatingly with
a little tremor in her voice.

Christopher assured her not.

"You have hurt your face."

"The branch of a tree," he began shamefacedly, and stopped lamely.

"I'm so sorry."

No more was said. Renata was conscious of her own failure to get on
with Christopher, but she put it down entirely to her own shyness,
which interfered now in preventing her overriding his very transparent
fib in Patricia's defence. She went away rather troubled and unhappy.
But Christopher, a great deal more troubled and unhappy, looked out of
the hall window with a gloomy frown. His own words to Patricia that
she had so sharply resented, about the women he had seen fighting in
the street, had called up other pictures of the older life, pictures
in which Marley Sartin figured only too distinctly. He felt
uncomfortably near these shifting scenes. Like Patricia, he wanted to
deny the connection betw