before such things in a woman.

She had not seen or written to me because she would not have her
resolution weakened. After the great wrench, succeeding things were
easier. She had taken Anastasius's cats and proposed to work them in
the music-halls abroad and send the proceeds to be administered for the
little man's comfort at the Maison de Sante. As both her name and the
Papadopoulos troupe of cats were well known in the "variety" world, it
would be a simple matter to obtain engagements. She had already opened
negotiations for a short season somewhere abroad. I was not to be
anxious about her. She would have plenty of occupation.

". . . I am not sending you any address, for I don't want you to know
where I am, dear. I shan't write to you again unless I scribble things
and tear them up without posting. This is final. When a woman makes such
a break she must do it once and for all. Oh, Simon, when you kissed me
two days ago you thought you loved me; but I know what the senses are
and how they deceive people, and I had only just caught your senses
on that spring afternoon, and I made you do it, for I had been aching,
aching for months for a word of love from you, and when it came I was
ashamed. But I should have been weak and shut my eyes to everything if
Miss Faversham had not come to me like God's good angel. . . ."

At the fourth reading of the letter I stopped short at these words.
God's good angel, indeed! Could anything have been more calculated to
put a man into a frenzy? I seized my hat and stick and went in search
of the nearest public telephone office. In less than ten minutes I had
arranged an immediate interview with Eleanor Faversham at my sister
Agatha's, and in less than half an hour I was pacing up and down
Agatha's sitting-room waiting for her. God's good angel! The sound
of the words made me choke with wrath. There are times when angelic
interference in human destinies is entirely unwarrantable. I stamped and
I fumed, and I composed a speech in which I told Eleanor exactly what I
thought of angels.

As I had to wait a considerable time, however, before Eleanor appeared,
the raging violence of my wrath abated, and when she did enter the room
smiling and fresh, with the spring in her clear eyes and a flush on her
cheek, I just said: "How d'ye do, Eleanor?" in the most commonplace way,
and offered her a chair.

"I've come, you see. You were rather peremptory, so I thought it must be
a matter of