tor was detained, and when
he came back--well, the poor wife had succumbed to her devotion. She
never kept in his pipe again.

Nancy tried to laugh. She was in her own chair again, and sat resting
her cheek upon her hand, gazing at the fire.

'How is it, Lionel, that no one ever knocks at your door when I'm here.'

'Oh, very simple. I sport the oak--as you know.'

'But don't you think some friend of yours might see a light in your
window, and come up?'

'If so, _il respecte la consigne_.'

'No, no; I don't like you when you begin to use French words. I think
it reminds me of once when you did it a long time ago,--and I thought
you--never mind.'

Tarrant laughed.

'Weren't they strange--those meetings of ours at Champion Hill? What did
you think me? Arrogant? Insolent? That is my tendency with strangers, I
admit.'

'But I was asking you a question,' said Nancy. 'You mean that no one
would knock, if he saw your outer door closed. But what would they
think?'

'No doubt--that I was working. I am supposed to be secretly engaged on
some immortal composition.'

Nancy pondered.

'I do hope no one that knows you will ever see me coming or going.'

'What could it matter? They wouldn't know who you were.'

'But to have such things thought. I should feel it just as if they knew
me. I believe I could never come again.'

'Why, what's the matter with you?' Tarrant asked. 'You have tears in
your eyes. You're not well to-day.' He checked himself on an unwelcome
thought, and proceeded more carelessly. 'Do you suppose for a moment
that any friend of mine is ass enough to think with condemnation of a
girl who should come to my rooms--whatever the circumstances? You must
get rid of that provincialism--let us call it Camberwellism.'

'They wouldn't think it any harm--even if--?'

'My dear girl, we have outgrown those ancestral prejudices.' Tarrant's
humour never quite deserted him, least of all when he echoed the talk
of his world; but his listener kept a grave face. 'We have nothing to do
with Mrs. Grundy's morals.'

'But you believe in a morality of some kind?' she pursued with
diffidence. 'You used the word "immoral" just now.'

Nancy felt no consciousness of the gulf that yawned between herself as
she spoke now and the old self which had claimed 'superiority.' Her mind
was so completely unsettled that she never tried to connect its present
state with its earlier phases. For the most part, her sensations and
her