y or two after that occasion, she received a call from the Bevis
girls, who told her of their brother's approaching departure for
Bordeaux, and thereupon she invited the trio to dine with her. A
fortnight subsequently to the dinner she had a chance encounter with
Bevis in Oxford Street; constraint of business did not allow him to
walk beside her for more than a minute or two, but they spoke of Mrs.
Cosgrove's on the following Sunday, and there, accordingly, found each
other.

Tremor of self-consciousness kept Monica in dread of being watched and
suspected. Few people were present to-day, and after exchanging formal
words with Bevis, she moved away to talk with the hostess. Not till
half an hour had passed did she venture to obey the glances which her
all but avowed lover cast towards her in conversation. He was so much
at ease, so like what she had always known him, that Monica asked
herself whether she had not mistaken the meaning of his homage. One
moment she hoped it might be so; the next, she longed for some sign of
passionate devotion, and thought with anguish of the day, now so near,
when he would be gone for ever. This, she ardently believed, was the
man who should have been her husband. Him she could love with heart and
soul, could make his will her absolute law, could live on his smiles,
could devote herself to his interests. The independence she had been
struggling to assert ever since her marriage meant only freedom to
love. If she had understood herself as she now did, her life would
never have been thus cast into bondage.

'The girls,' Bevis was saying, 'leave on Thursday. The rest of the week
I shall be alone. On Monday the furniture will be stowed away at the
Pantechnicon, and on Tuesday--off I go.'

A casual listener could have supposed that the prospect pleased him.
Monica, with a fixed smile, looked at the other groups conversing in
the room; no one was paying any attention to her. In the same moment
she heard a murmur from her companion's lips; he was speaking still,
but in a voice only just audible.

'Come on Friday afternoon about four o'clock.'

Her heart began to throb painfully, and she knew that a treacherous
colour had risen to her checks.

'Do come--once more--for the last time. It shall be just as
before--just as before. An hour's talk, and we will say good-bye to
each other.'

She was powerless to breathe a word. Bevis, noticing that Mrs. Cosgrove
had thrown a look in their directio