to
think about it all."

This was as far as she could get. They had by this time reached Sheen
Gate again, and Enid took her bicycle from him. She did not look at him,
and, indeed, could not even trust herself to say "thank you." She
mounted and rode through the comparatively lonely roads in a sort of
dream until the traffic at Hammersmith Bridge and Broadway mercifully
compelled her to give her whole attention to the steering of her
machine.

When she got home she gave her bicycle to the porter, went straight to
her own room, took off her hat and gloves and jacket, and then dropped
quietly on the bed and laid there, staring with tearless eyes up at the
ceiling, wondering vaguely what it all meant, and if it was really true.

Vane stood and watched her until she swept round a bend in the road, and
then walked on with the one thought echoing and re-echoing in the
emptiness of his soul--the thought of the course which he was bound to
follow by the dictates of both love and duty. He had reached the Surrey
end of Hammersmith Bridge when the strong smell of alcoholic liquor
coming through the open door of a public-house caused him to stop for a
moment. Would a drink do him any harm after what had happened? He had
passed a sleepless night in the open air, and felt almost
fainting--surely a drop of brandy would do him no harm under the
circumstances? Then he remembered the hearthrug in the Den, and turned
towards the bridge with something between a sneer and a curse on his
lips.

Was he always to be beset by temptation in this way--and would he always
have strength to successfully combat the evil influence? If Fate had
really marked him out for a dipsomaniac, was it any use his fighting
against what must inevitably be his destiny? His thoughts were
interrupted by the rumbling of a 'bus which was coming towards him, and,
seeing that it was one which went through Kensington, he jumped on it
and went home.

He alighted at Warwick Gardens, and on reaching the house found that his
father had just come in for lunch.

"It's all right, dad," he said, anticipating his inevitable question. "I
got shut in Richmond Park by accident, and did a night in the open. But
I'll tell you all about it at lunch. I'm going to have a tub now."

Lunch was ready by the time Vane came downstairs, re-clothed and
refreshed, and when they were alone he repeated to his father almost
verbatim the conversation he had had with Enid.

"Well, my boy,"