it again beneath a lamp.

"DEAR JOLYON,

"Soames came again to-night--my thirty-seventh birthday. You were right,
I mustn't stay here. I'm going to-morrow to the Piedmont Hotel, but I
won't go abroad without seeing you. I feel lonely and down-hearted.

"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, seein