oked beyond him, as if somewhere they saw something that frightened
her.

"You mustn't leave her, Ranny," she said.

He laughed. "She doesn't want me. She's just told me so."

"Whether she wants you or not you've got to stay with her."

She said it sternly.

"I say, you needn't talk like that. To hear you any one would think I
fair neglected her."

She bit her lip. Her eyes wandered in their troubled way. She looked
like a thing held there under his eyes against its will and seeking
some way of escape.

"I don't think you neglect her, Ranny," she said at last.

"Well, then, what _do_ you think?"

She turned. "I think I'm going for a little spin somewhere by myself. I
shall come back in time for dinner. Then I shall go down to Wandsworth
and fetch Baby."

"I'll do that."

"No, you won't. You'll stay with Violet," she said.

"And what about your holiday?"

"My holiday's all right. Don't you worry."

She was out of the house and in the garden. Mechanically he wheeled her
bicycle out into the road. He was utterly submissive to her will.

She mounted, and he ran by her side; she pressed on her pedals,
compelling him to run fast and faster; she set her mouth hard, grinning,
and forced the pace, and he ran at the top of his speed and laughed. At
the end of the Avenue she turned, waved to him gaily and was gone.

Upstairs on her bed, in the room of the love knots, Violet lay and
writhed. She lay on her face. She had wetted her pillow with her tears;
she had flung it aside and was digging her hands into Ransome's pillow
with a tearing, disemboweling motion. Every now and then, with the
regularity of a machine, she gave out a sob and a groan that shook her.

He found her so.

She turned on her side as he entered, and showed him her face scarlet
and swollen with crying.

"What have you come for?" she said. "I _told_ you to go."

"I haven't gone. I'm not going."

"But you've got to go. You shall go. D'you hear? I won't have you
hanging about, watching and tormenting me. What are you afraid of? What
d'you think I'm going to do?"

She turned and raised herself on her elbow and stared about her as if at
a host of enemies surrounding her, then she sank back helpless.

"Won't you tell me what it is, Vi?" he said, tenderly.

He sat beside her, leaning over into her hot lair, and made as though he
would have put his hand on her shoulder. She writhed from him.

"Why can't you let me be," she cried, "when I d