hought she was marvellously
beautiful--and very young, far younger than himself. As for him, he was
the dandy, in striking contrast to her. His dandyism as he sat on her
knee pleased both of them. He looked older than his years, his shoulders
had broadened, his dark moustache thickened. In his own view he was
utterly adult, as she was in hers. But their young faces so close
together, so confident, were touchingly immature. As he observed her
grave satisfaction at his presence, the comfort which he gave her, he
felt sure of her, and the memory of his just resentment came to him, and
he was tenderly reproachful.

"I expected to hear from you," he said. The male in him relished the
delicate accusation of his tone.

Marguerite answered with a little startled intake of breath:

"She's dead!"

"Dead?"

"She died this afternoon. The layer-out left about half an hour ago."

Death parted them. He rose from her knee, and Marguerite did not try to
prevent him. He was profoundly shocked. With desolating vividness he
recalled the Sunday afternoon when he had carried upstairs the plump,
living woman now dead. He had always liked Mrs. Lob--it was as Mrs. Lob
that he thought of her. He had seen not much of her. Only on that Sunday
afternoon had he and she reached a sort of intimacy--unspoken but real.
He had liked her. He had even admired her. She was no ordinary being.
And he had sympathized with her for Marguerite's quite explicable
defection. He had often wished that those two, the charwoman and his
beloved, could somehow have been brought together. The menaces of death
had brought them together. Mrs. Lob was laid out in the bedroom which he
had once entered. Mrs. Lob had been dying while he dined richly with
Miss Wheeler and Laurencine, and while he talked cynically with Everard
Lucas. And while he had been resenting Marguerite's neglect Marguerite
was watching by the dying bed. Oh! The despicable superficialities of
restaurants and clubs! He was ashamed. The mere receding shadow of death
shamed him.

"The baby's dead too, of course," Marguerite added. "She ought never to
have had a baby. It seems she had had two miscarriages."

There were tears in Marguerite's eyes and in her voice. Nevertheless her
tone was rather matter-of-fact as she related these recondite and
sinister things. George thought that women were very strange. Imagine
Marguerite quietly talking to him in this strain! Then the sense of the
formidable secret