you bread and butter.'

She went out quietly, and Conroy reddened.

'We're still children, you see,' said Miss Henschil. 'But I'm well
enough to feel some shame of it. D'you take sugar?'

They starved together heroically, and Nurse Blaber was good enough to
signify approval when she came to clear away.

'Nursey?' Miss Henschil insinuated, and flushed.

'Do you smoke?' said the nurse coolly to Conroy.

'I haven't in years. Now you mention it, I think I'd like a
cigarette--or something.'

'I used to. D'you think it would keep me quiet?' Miss Henschil said.

'Perhaps. Try these.' The nurse handed them her cigarette-case.

'Don't take anything else,' she commanded, and went away with the
tea-basket.

'Good!' grunted Conroy, between mouthfuls of tobacco.

'Better than nothing,' said Miss Henschil; but for a while they felt
ashamed, yet with the comfort of children punished together.

'Now,' she whispered, 'who were you when you were a man?'

Conroy told her, and in return she gave him her history. It delighted
them both to deal once more in worldly concerns--families, names,
places, and dates--with a person of understanding.

She came, she said, of Lancashire folk--wealthy cotton-spinners, who
still kept the broadened _a_ and slurred aspirate of the old stock. She
lived with an old masterful mother in an opulent world north of
Lancaster Gate, where people in Society gave parties at a Mecca called
the Langham Hotel.

She herself had been launched into Society there, and the flowers at the
ball had cost eighty-seven pounds; but, being reckoned peculiar, she had
made few friends among her own sex. She had attracted many men, for she
was a beauty--_the_ beauty, in fact, of Society, she said.

She spoke utterly without shame or reticence, as a life-prisoner tells
his past to a fellow-prisoner; and Conroy nodded across the smoke-rings.

'Do you remember when you got into the carriage?' she asked. '(Oh, I
wish I had some knitting!) Did you notice aught, lad?'

Conroy thought back. It was ages since. 'Wasn't there some one outside
the door--crying?' he asked.

'He's--he's the little man I was engaged to,' she said. 'But I made him
break it off. I told him 'twas no good. But he won't, yo' see.'

'_That_ fellow? Why, he doesn't come up to your shoulder.'

'That's naught to do with it. I think all the world of him. I'm a
foolish wench'--her speech wandered as she settled herself cosily, one
elbow on the arm-re