gerous silence.

"I am afraid that up till now, what I have liked, I have liked
tremendously, but I have not always liked it for very long. You will
remember that in pity, won't you?" she said lightly.

Harry Luttrell was quick to catch her tone.

"I shall remember it with considerable apprehension if I am fortunate
enough ever to get into your good books." His little speech ended with a
gasp. The letter which he was holding carelessly in his fingers had
almost slipped from them into the locked letter box.

Joan crossed to where he stood.

"That's all right," she said. "You can post your letter there. The box
is cleared regularly."

"No doubt," Harry Luttrell returned. "But I am no longer sure that I am
going to post it."

The letter to his friend at the War Office contained an earnest prayer
that a peremptory telegram should be sent to him at Rackham Park, at an
early hour on the next morning, commanding his return to London.

He looked up at Joan.

"You despise racing, don't you?"

"I am going to Gatwick to-morrow."

"You are!" he cried eagerly.

"Of course."

He stood poising the letter in the palm of his open hand. The thought of
Stella Croyle bade him post it. The presence of Joan Whitworth, and he
was so conscious of her, paralysed his arm. Some vague sense of the
tumult within him passed out from him to her. An intuition seized upon
her that that letter was in some way vital to her, in some way a menace
to her. Any moment he might post it! Once posted he might let it go. She
drew a little sharp breath. He was standing there, so still, so quiet
and slow in his decision. It became necessary to her that words should
be spoken. She spoke the first which rose to her lips.

"You are going to stay for the Willoughbys' ball, aren't you?"

Harry Luttrell smiled.

"But you despise dancing."

"I? I adore it!"

She smiled as she spoke, but she spoke with a queer shyness which took
him off his feet. He slowly tore the letter across and again across and
then into little pieces and carried them to the waste-paper basket.

The action brought home to her with a shock that there was a letter
which she, in her turn, must write, must write and post in that glass
letter-box, oh, without any hesitation or error, this very evening. She
thought upon it with repugnance, but it had to be written and done with.
It was the consequence of her own folly, her own vanity. Harry Luttrell
returned to her but he did not re