ile the blue fume from two cigarettes
fast-smoked, rose towards the low ceiling. Then Noel got up from the
divan, and went over to the piano. She was still in her hospital dress
of lilac-coloured linen, and while she stood there touching the
keys, playing a chord now, and then, Leila's heart felt hollow from
compassion; she was so happy herself just now, and this child so very
wretched!

"Play to me," she said; "no--don't; I'll play to you." And sitting down,
she began to play and sing a little French song, whose first line ran:
"Si on est jolie, jolie comme vous." It was soft, gay, charming. If
the girl cried, so much the better. But Noel did not cry. She seemed
suddenly to have recovered all her self-possession. She spoke calmly,
answered Leila's questions without emotion, and said she would go home.
Leila went out with her, and walked some way in the direction of her
home; distressed, but frankly at a loss. At the bottom of Portland
Place Noel stopped and said: "I'm quite all right now, Leila; thank you
awfully. I shall just go home and lie down. And I shall come to-morrow,
the same as usual. Goodbye!" Leila could only grasp the girl's hand,
and say: "My dear, that's splendid. There's many a slip--besides, it's
war-time."

With that saying, enigmatic even to herself, she watched the girl
moving slowly away; and turned back herself towards her hospital, with a
disturbed and compassionate heart.

2

But Noel did not go east; she walked down Regent Street. She had
received a certain measure of comfort, been steadied by her experienced
cousin's vitality, and the new thoughts suggested by those words: "He
hasn't quite gone from you, has he?" "Besides, it's war-time." Leila
had spoken freely, too, and the physical ignorance in which the girl had
been groping these last weeks was now removed. Like most proud natures,
she did not naturally think much about the opinion of other people;
besides, she knew nothing of the world, its feelings and judgments. Her
nightmare was the thought of her father's horror and grief. She tried to
lessen that nightmare by remembering his opposition to her marriage, and
the resentment she had felt. He had never realised, never understood,
how she and Cyril loved. Now, if she were really going to have a
child, it would be Cyril's--Cyril's son--Cyril over again. The instinct
stronger than reason, refinement, tradition, upbringing, which had
pushed her on in such haste to make sure of union--