that she has tried to keep back
break forth, and covering her face with her hands she cries as though
her heart would break.

Paul goes up to her. 'Philippa, my dear,' he says very gently, 'there is
something very wrong, can't you tell me why Jimmy went away--'

'No, no,' she sobs. 'I told him to go, but I can't tell you why--'

'How cold you are,' he says. 'Stop crying and go to bed at once, or you
will make yourself ill.'

'Very well,' replies she, meekly. 'But you [sob] you won't tell Mabel--'

'I won't tell a soul.'

'And you're not vexed with me?'

'No; why should I be. Good-night.'

'Good-night,' such a sad little face she turns to him, that he stoops
and kisses it.

'What a child she is,' he thinks, as he watches her down the passage. 'I
wonder what induced her to throw Jimmy over. Couldn't have been better
off as regards a husband. Money! as if that would ever enter into her
head. Can't make it out at all. She likes him I can see.'

For some time, Paul puzzles his handsome head about Philippa, and then
when sleep has come, he dreams of the woman he loved; she to whom he
gave his love, his faith, his all, only to be abused; the woman who has
blighted his life. Oh! it is a strange world. It is like a puzzle that
everyone tries to make, but does not succeed because the principal parts
are missing. Will they ever be found, the missing links, the pieces of
the puzzle, the answer to the 'whys' and 'wherefores?'

'We run a race to-day, and find no halting place,
All things we see be far within our scope
And still we peer beyond with craving face.'

CHAPTER VIII

In a few days they are back again in Brook Street, George, Mabel and
Philippa. It is the beginning of September and anything more dreary and
deserted than the parks could not be imagined. No one is in London. Who
would be when the seaside is everything delightful and the moors are
covered with heather and grouse? Philippa shudders as she looks out of
her bedroom window into the mews, even that is deserted, a canary in a
very small cage and a lean cat are the only living creatures to be
seen.

'Well,' she says, 'it might almost be the city of the dead ...' here her
meditations are interrupted by Teddy, who rushes in and flings his arms
round her neck. 'How brown you are,' she exclaims.

'Yes, ain't I,' he answers. 'Me and Marie have been in the Square most
of the days and it has been so hot, have you enjoyed yourself?'

'Ye