d to get out of her for nothing."

"It isn't my business. I can't help it, if she likes to come here and
work for nothing."

"You make me sick," said Ranny.

His eyelids stung him as if they had been cut by little, little knives
close under the eyeballs. He turned from her, shamed, as if he had
witnessed some indecency, some outrage on a beautiful innocent thing.

Outside in the sunlight his tears dazzled him an instant and sank back
into their stinging ducts.

* * * * *

Yes, it had stung him. And he had got to end it, somehow, for Winny's
sake. He had no idea how to set about it. He could not let the little
thing come and do his wife's work for her, like that, on the sly, for
nothing. And yet he could not tell her not to come.

And he asked himself again and again, "Why, why does she do it? Why?
Like that--for nothing?"

His heart began to beat uncomfortably, trying to tell him why. But he
did not listen to it. He was angry with his heart for trying to tell him
things he did not know and did not want to know.

No. He ought not to let her keep on coming. But what was he to do? How
could he tell her not to come?

He went home through Wandsworth that evening and called at St. Ann's
Terrace. Winny was there. She came down to him where he waited on the
doorstep. As they stood there he could see over the low palings of the
gardens the window of the little house where he had climbed in that
night, that Sunday night, more than two years ago.

He said he had come to ask her to spend Bank Holiday with them. They
might go for a sort of picnic to Richmond Park, and she must come back
to supper.

That was his idea, his solution, his inspiration; that she must come;
that she must be asked, must be implored to come; but as a guest, in
high honor, and in festival.

They settled it. And still he lingered awkwardly.

"I say--is it true that you've left Starker's?"

"Yes."

"What did you do that for, Winky?"

He did not know that he was going to ask her that; but somehow he had
to.

She paused, but with no sign of embarrassment; looking at him with her
profound and placid eyes. It was as if she had to search for the truth
before she answered him.

"I thought it best," she said at last. "I didn't want to stay."

"Were you wise?"

She smiled.

"Yes, Ranny. I think so."

No. There was not a trace of embarrassment about her, such embarrassment
as she would have been bound to fee