fade into
vagueness. I picked a bunch of heliotrope which she pinned at her bosom.

"Lola," I said, "I want to speak to you seriously."

She smiled wanly: "Do we ever speak otherwise these dreadful days?"

"It's about Dale. Read this," said I, and I handed her Lady Kynnersley's
letter. She read it through and returned it to me.

"Well?"

"I asked you a week or two ago what you were going to do with your
life," I said. "Does that letter offer you any suggestion?"

"I'm to give him some hope--what hope can I give him?"

"You're a free woman--free to marry. For the boy's sake the mother will
consent. When she knows you as well as we know you she will--"

"She will--what? Love me?"

"She's a woman not given to loving--except, in unexpected bursts, her
offspring. But she will respect you."

She stood for a few moments silent, her arm resting against the window
jamb and her head on her arm. She remained there so long that at last I
rose and, looking at her face, saw that her eyes were full of tears. She
dashed them away with the back of her hand, gave me a swift look, and
went and sat in the shadow of the room. An action of this kind on the
part of a woman signifies a desire for solitude. I lit a cigarette and
went into the garden.

It was a sorry business. I saw as clearly as Lola that Lady Kynnersley
desired to purchase Dale's immediate happiness at any price, and that
the future might bring bitter repentance. But I offered no advice.
I have finished playing at Deputy Providence. A madman letting off
fireworks in a gunpowder factory plays a less dangerous game.

Presently she joined me and ran her arm through mine.

"I'll write to Dale this afternoon," she said. "Don't let us talk of it
any more now. You are tired out. It's time for you to go and lie down.
I'll walk with you up the hill."

It has come to this, that I must lie down for some hours during the day
lest I should fall to pieces.

"I suppose I'll have to," I laughed. "What a thing it is to have the
wits of a man and the strength of a baby."

She pressed my arm and said in her low caressing voice which I had not
heard for many weeks: "I shouldn't be so proud of those man's wits, if I
were you."

I knew she said it playfully with reference to masculine non-perception
of the feminine; but I chose to take it broadly.

"My dear Lola," said I, "it has been borne in upon me that I am the most
witless fool that the unwisdom of generations of English