ally furtively as he returned to
his seat. She was seeing him with new eyes. It was as if this trifling
incident had removed some sort of a veil. He had suddenly become more
alive. For an instant she had seen right into him, to the hidden deeps
of his soul. She felt shy and embarrassed.

"Pat died," she said at length. She felt the necessity of saying
something.

"I liked Pat."

"He picked up some poison, poor darling.... How long ago those days
seem, don't they?"

"They are always pretty vivid to me. I wonder who has that old house
of yours now."

"I heard the other day," said Jill more easily. The odd sensation of
embarrassment was passing. "Some people called ... what was the
name?... Debenham, I think."

Silence fell again. It was broken by the front-door bell, like an
alarm-clock that shatters a dream.

Wally got up.

"Your uncle," he said.

"You aren't going to open the door?"

"That was the scheme."

"But he'll get such a shock when he sees you."

"He must look on it in the light of rent. I don't see why I shouldn't
have a little passing amusement from this business."

He left the room. Jill heard the front door open. She waited
breathlessly. Pity for Uncle Chris struggled with the sterner feeling
that it served him right.

"Hullo!" she heard Wally say.

"Hullo-ullo-ullo!" replied an exuberant voice. "Wondered if I'd find
you in, and all that sort of thing. I say, what a deuce of a way up it
is here. Sort of get a chappie into training for going to heaven,
what? I mean, what?"

Jill looked about her like a trapped animal. It was absurd, she felt,
but every nerve in her body cried out against the prospect of meeting
Freddie. His very voice had opened old wounds and set them throbbing.

She listened in the doorway. Out of sight down the passage, Freddie
seemed by the sounds to be removing his overcoat. She stole out and
darted like a shadow down the corridor that led to Wally's bedroom.
The window of the bedroom opened on to the wide roof which Uncle Chris
had eulogized. She slipped noiselessly out, closing the window behind
her.

II

"I say, Mason, old top," said Freddie, entering the sitting-room, "I
hope you don't mind my barging in like this, but the fact is things
are a bit thick. I'm dashed worried, and I didn't know another soul I
could talk it over with. As a matter of fact, I wasn't sure you were
in New York at all, but I remembered hearing you say in London that
you were pop