he iron shutter,
and was too late for Winny. But the third evening he saw her standing by
the door and talking to the same strange girl. The girl had her back to
him, but Winny faced him. She was not aware of him at first; but, at the
signal that he gave, she turned sharply and went from him, drawing the
girl with her, arm in arm.

They disappeared northward up the same side street as before.

That was on a Friday. On Sunday he called at St. Ann's Terrace and saw
Maudie Hollis, who told him that Winny had gone up Hampstead way. No,
not for good, but with a friend. She had been very much taken up lately
with a friend.

"You know what she is when she's taken up," said Maudie.

He sighed unaware, and Maudie answered his sigh.

"It isn't a gentleman friend."

"No?" It was wonderful the indifference Ranny packed into that little
word.

"Catch _her_!" said Maudie.

She smiled at him as he turned away, and in the middle of his own misery
it struck him that poor Maudie would have to wait many years before
Booty could afford to marry her, and that already her proud beauty was a
little sharpened and a little dimmed by waiting.

On Monday he refrained from hanging round the door in Starker's iron
shutter. But on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday he was at his post, and
remained there till the door was shut almost in his face.

On Friday he was late, and he could see even in the distance the shut
door.

But somebody was there, somebody was standing close up against the
shutter; somebody who moved forward a step as he came, somebody who had
been waiting for him. It was not Winny. It was the tall girl.

He raised his hat in answer to the movement that was her signal, and
would have passed on, but she stopped him. She stood almost in front of
him, so that he should not pass. And the biggest and darkest blue eyes
he had ever seen arrested him with a strange bending on him of black
brows.

The strange girl was saying something to him, in a voice full and yet
low, a voice with a sort of thick throb in it, and in its thickness a
sweet and poignant quality.

"Please," it was saying, "excuse me, you're Mr. Ransome, aren't
you--Winny Dymond's friend?"

With a "Yes" that strangled itself and became inarticulate, he admitted
that he was Mr. Ransome.

The girl lowered her eyelids (deep white eyelids they were, and hung
with black fringes, marvelously thick and long); she lowered them as if
her own behavior and his had made