k it at all fitting!" she said. "Why don't you send for a
policeman, and stop it?"

He pushed open the gate, and, taking no further notice of her, walked
up the little path to his door. Reaching it, he found her behind him.

With that air of girlish authority he had once found so pleasant, "I am
coming in," she said.

He led the way into that bow-windowed room in which Mrs Kilbourne had
died. The pervading aroma of alcohol had left it; airiness and a
certain formal tidiness now reigned in place of stuffiness and neglect;
but the room was perhaps more depressing than before to a sensitive
mind.

The sofa was in the same place; the basket, which had held the things
she liked to have at hand, still stood beside it. The over-large table
at which the unfortunate Julia had so often watched her husband eat his
unappetising meals, and where he still made a pretence of eating them
in sight of the empty sofa, still occupied too much of the available
space.

Kilbourne turned and confronted the girl, who had followed him in. His
eyes shone now, and there was the working of excitement in his face.

"I thought we had said our last words," he began; "I thought that that,
at least, was done with--and you were going away. You have no right to
follow me, Kate, to overthrow me in this fashion. My strength is almost
exhausted; I have tried too much--too much--and all alone----"

"I know," she said, with her fine air of decision. "That is why I have
come. You mustn't be alone any more. You must come with us."

He had tossed away his hat, and thrust his hands which were shaking,
into his coat-pockets. He turned with excitement upon her, but she went
firmly on.

"With Alick and me. You are too good for the post you hold; with your
degrees you can easily get a better one. Come to Paris. Turn your back
upon all that has been depressing and worrying you; upon this
melancholy room"--she gazed round upon the unlovely space--"upon
this"--she waved a peremptory, small hand towards the vacant sofa.

He looked at her with his accusing eyes, with a scarcely controlled
emotion; but she stopped him when he tried to speak.

"We have been good friends," she said. "If I have not helped you
through these two years we have walked as comrades together, you, at
least, have helped me. Helped me so much"--she paused a moment, and the
level tone of her voice quavered musically--"that I cannot lose you;
that I need you terribly still."

"And I!" he b