t wait. I waited in the porch I don't know how
long. Then of course I came home, as there was no sign of you."

"When I went back you weren't there; it must have been while you were
with old Batch; so I naturally didn't stay. I just came straight up
here. I was afraid you were vexed because I'd left you alone."

"Well, and if I was!" said Rachel, splendidly contradicting herself.
"It's not a very nice thing for a girl to be left alone like
that--_and all on account of a stick_!" There was a break in her
voice.

Arrived at the gate, she pushed it open.

"Good-night," she snapped. "Please don't come in."

And within the gate she deliberately stared at him with an unforgiving
gaze. The impartial lamp-post lighted the scene.

"Good-night," she repeated harshly. She was saying to herself: "He
really does take it in the most beautiful way. I could do anything I
liked with him."

"Good-night," said Louis, with strict punctilio.

When she got to the top of the steps she remembered that Louis had the
latch-key. He was gone. She gave a wet sob and impulsively ran down
the steps and opened the gate. Louis returned. She tried to speak and
could not.

"I beg your pardon," said Louis. "Of course you want the key."

He handed her the key with a gesture that disconcertingly melted the
rigour of all her limbs. She snatched at it, and plunged for the gate
just as the tears rolled down her cheeks in a shower. The noise of the
gate covered a fresh sob. She did not look back. Amid all her quite
real distress she was proud and happy--proud because she was old
enough and independent enough and audacious enough to quarrel with
her lover, and happy because she had suddenly discovered life. And the
soft darkness and the wind, and the faint sky reflections of distant
furnace fires, and the sense of the road winding upward, and the very
sense of the black mass of the house in front of her (dimly lighted at
the upper floor) all made part of her mysterious happiness.

CHAPTER VIII

END AND BEGINNING

I

"Mrs. Tams!" said Mrs. Maldon, in a low, alarmed, and urgent voice.

The gas was turned down in the bedroom, and Mrs. Maldon, looking from
her bed across the chamber, could only just distinguish the stout,
vague form of the charwoman asleep in an arm-chair. The light from
the street lamp was strong enough to throw faint shadows of the
window-frames on the blinds. The sleeper did not stir.

Mrs. Maldon summoned again, more