t proved that in old days,
with herself, by running away from her? And she had often regretted
having told him of Cyril Morland's death. One day she determined to
repair that error. It was at the Zoo, where they often went on Sunday
afternoons. They were standing before a creature called the meercat,
which reminded them both of old days on the veldt. Without turning her
head she said, as if to the little animal: "Do you know that your
fairy princess, as you call her, is going to have what is known as a
war-baby?"

The sound of his "What!" gave her quite a stab. It was so utterly
horrified.

She said stubbornly: "She came and told me all about it. The boy is
dead, as you know. Yes, terrible, isn't it?" And she looked at him. His
face was almost comic, so wrinkled up with incredulity.

"That lovely child! But it's impossible!"

"The impossible is sometimes true, Jimmy."

"I refuse to believe it."

"I tell you it is so," she said angrily.

"What a ghastly shame!"

"It was her own doing; she said so, herself."

"And her father--the padre! My God!"

Leila was suddenly smitten with a horrible doubt. She had thought it
would disgust him, cure him of any little tendency to romanticise that
child; and now she perceived that it was rousing in him, instead, a
dangerous compassion. She could have bitten her tongue out for having
spoken. When he got on the high horse of some championship, he was not
to be trusted, she had found that out; was even finding it out bitterly
in her own relations with him, constantly aware that half her hold on
him, at least, lay in his sense of chivalry, aware that he knew her
lurking dread of being flung on the beach, by age. Only ten minutes
ago he had uttered a tirade before the cage of a monkey which seemed
unhappy. And now she had roused that dangerous side of him in favour of
Noel. What an idiot she had been!

"Don't look like that, Jimmy. I'm sorry I told you."

His hand did not answer her pressure in the least, but he muttered:

"Well, I do think that's the limit. What's to be done for her?"

Leila answered softly: "Nothing, I'm afraid. Do you love me?" And she
pressed his hand hard.

"Of course."

But Leila thought: 'If I were that meercat he'd have taken more notice
of my paw!' Her heart began suddenly to ache, and she walked on to the
next cage with head up, and her mouth hard set.

Jimmy Fort walked away from Camelot Mansions that evening in extreme
discomfort of mind.