me not to meet her at the station, but to
go round after dinner to Cadogan Gardens.

Dawkins opened the door for me and showed me into the familiar
drawing-room. The long summer day was nearing its end, and only a dim
twilight came through the open windows. Lola was standing rigid on the
hearthrug, her hand shielding the whole of the right side of her face.
With the free hand she checked my impetuous advance.

"Stop and look!" she said, and then dropped the shielding hand, and
stood before me with twitching lips and death in her eyes. I saw in a
flash the devastation that had been wrought; but, thank God, I pierced
beneath it to the anguish in her heart. The pity--the awful, poignant
pity--of it smote me. Everything that was man in me surged towards her.
What she saw in my eyes I know not; but in hers dawned a sudden wonder.
There was no recoil of shock, such as she had steeled herself to
encounter. I sprang forward and clasped her in my arms. Her stiffened
frame gradually relaxed and our lips met, and in that kiss all fears and
doubts were dissolved for ever.

Some hours later she said: "If you are blind enough to care for a maimed
thing like me, I can't help it. I shall never understand it to my dying
day," she added with a long sigh.

"And you will marry me?"

"I suppose I've got to," she replied. And with the old pantherine twist
of her body she slid from her easy-chair to the ground and buried her
face on my knees.

And that is the end of my story. We were quietly married three weeks
afterwards. Agatha, wishing to humour a maniac for whom she retained an
unreasonable affection, came to the wedding and treated Lola as only a
sweet lady could. But my doings passed her understanding. As for Jane,
my other sister, she cast me from her. People who did these things, she
maintained, must bear the consequences. I bore them bravely. It is only
now that my name is beginning to be noised abroad as that of one who
speaks with some knowledge on certain social questions that Jane holds
out the olive branch of fraternal peace. After a brief honeymoon Lola
insisted on joining me in Barbara's Building. A set of rooms next to
mine was vacant, and Campion, who welcomed a new worker, had the two
sets thrown into what house-agents term a commodious flat. She is now
Lady Superior of the Institution. The title is Campion's, and for some
odd feminine reason Lola is delighted with it.

Yes, this is the end of the story which I