ve had much luck myself, sir."

The conversation was begun in proper form. Through it Louis could hear
Rachel buying a cutlet, and then another cutlet, from Mrs. Heath, and
protesting that five-pence was a good price and all she desired to pay
even for the finest cutlet in the shop. And then Rachel asked about
sweetbreads. Heath's voice grew more and more confidential and at
length, after a brief pause, he whispered--

"Ye're not married, are ye, sir? Excuse the liberty."

It was a whisper, but one of those terrible, miscalculated whispers
that can be heard for miles around, like the call of the cuckoo.
Plainly Heath was not aware of the identity of Rachel Fleckring. And
in his world, which was by no means the world of his shop and his
wife, it was incredible that a man should run round shopping with a
woman on a Saturday night unless he was a husband on unescapable duty.

Louis shook his head.

Mrs. Heath called out in severe accents which were a reproof and a
warning: "Got a sweetbread, Robert? It's for Mrs. Maldon."

The clumsy fool understood that he had blundered.

He had no sweetbread--not even for Mrs. Maldon. The cutlets were
wrapped in newspaper, and Louis rather self-consciously opened the maw
of the reticule for them.

"No offence, I hope, sir," said Heath as the pair left the shop,
thus aggravating his blunder. Louis and Rachel crossed Duck Bank in
constrained silence. Rachel was scarlet. The new cinema next to the
new Congregational chapel blazed in front of them.

"Wouldn't care to look in here, I suppose, would you?" Louis
imperturbably suggested.

Rachel did not reply.

"Only for a quarter of an hour or so," said Louis.

Rachel did not venture to glance up at him. She was so agitated that
she could scarcely speak.

"I don't think so," she muttered.

"Why not?" he exquisitely pleaded. "It will do you good."

She raised her head and saw the expression of his face, so charming,
so provocative, so persuasive. The voice within her was insistent, but
she would not listen to it. Nobody had ever looked at her as Louis
was looking at her then. The streets, the town faded. She thought:
"Whatever happens, I cannot withstand that face." She was feverishly
happy, and at the same time ravaged by both pain and fear. She became
a fatalist. And she abandoned the pretence that she was not the slave
of that face. Her eyes grew candidly acquiescent, as if she were
murmuring to him, "I am defenceless again