"Yours affectionately,

"IRENE."

He folded the letter back into his pocket and walked on, astonished at
the violence of his feelings. What had the fellow said or done?

He turned into High Street, down the Turf, and on among a maze of spires
and domes and long college fronts and walls, bright or dark-shadowed in
the strong moonlight. In this very heart of England's gentility it was
difficult to realise that a lonely woman could be importuned or hunted,
but what else could her letter mean? Soames must have been pressing her
to go back to him again, with public opinion and the Law on his side,
too! 'Eighteen-ninety-nine!,' he thought, gazing at the broken glass
shining on the top of a villa garden wall; 'but when it comes to
property we're still a heathen people! I'll go up to-morrow morning. I
dare say it'll be best for her to go abroad.' Yet the thought displeased
him. Why should Soames hunt her out of England! Besides, he might
follow, and out there she would be still more helpless against the
attentions of her own husband! 'I must tread warily,' he thought; 'that
fellow could make himself very nasty. I didn't like his manner in the
cab the other night.' His thoughts turned to his daughter June. Could
she help? Once on a time Irene had been her greatest friend, and now she
was a 'lame duck,' such as must appeal to June's nature! He determined
to wire to his daughter to meet him at Paddington Station. Retracing his
steps towards the Rainbow he questioned his own sensations. Would he be
upsetting himself over every woman in like case? No! he would not. The
candour of this conclusion discomfited him; and, finding that Holly had
gone up to bed, he sought his own room. But he could not sleep, and
sat for a long time at his window, huddled in an overcoat, watching the
moonlight on the roofs.

Next door Holly too was awake, thinking of the lashes above and below
Val's eyes, especially below; and of what she could do to make Jolly
like him better. The scent of the gardenia was strong in her little
bedroom, and pleasant to her.

And Val, leaning out of his first-floor window in B.N.C., was gazing
at a moonlit quadrangle without seeing it at all, seeing instead Holly,
slim and white-frocked, as she sat beside the fire when he first went
in.

But Jolly, in his bedroom narrow as a ghost, lay with a hand beneath
his cheek and dreamed he was with Val in one boat, rowing a race against
him, while his father was calling fro