the look of genuine
pleasure which, had come into her eyes; then he noted with concern how
worn and pale she looked.

"I didn't expect you quite so soon," she said. "I must have made a
mistake in the time, and I wanted to get my hair done nicely before you
got back."

"What has been the matter with you? Why didn't you write, dear?" he
asked.

She parried the questions until they got inside the flat, when he
repeated them, holding her hands, and looking into her eyes. She tried
to avoid his scrutiny.

"I've been all right," she answered, "only there was nothing to write
about."

But he would not be put off like that, and at last, with a sob, she told
him. "It's over now, and I didn't mean you to know. I--I've had the
brokers in." She was speaking hurriedly, in a low voice. "You see,
someone has been paying my rent, and I expected it the day you went
away--it should have come that morning--and it was due next day. I never
heard, and I only had a few shillings, so they put the brokers in at
once. These landlords always do."

Jimmy cursed silently. "Why didn't you wire to me? You know I would have
sent it at once."

She shook her head. "No, no. I hate taking money from you, above
everyone."

"What did you do in the end?"

She looked up and faced him, with a kind of desperate courage. "I got it
by going away for two days. It's no good disguising things, trying to
make out that I don't."

It was a question which was the paler, the man or the woman. It had come
home to him, as it had never done before. He dropped her hands and went
over to the window, where he stood very still, staring out with
absolutely unseeing eyes; whilst she watched him with a deadly pain at
her heart, thinking she had killed the love which she knew had grown up
in him.

"Perhaps it's best, after all, perhaps it's best." She tried desperately
hard to say the words to herself, then, almost unconsciously, she took a
step towards him. Possibly her action altered the whole course of two
lives, for, like a flash, he turned round, seized her in his arms, and
covered her face with kisses.

"I don't care, now I've come back, because it'll never happen again, it
can't happen again, and what went before has nothing to do with me.
We'll start afresh, dearest, we'll start afresh." He repeated the words
several times, savagely, as though wishing to assure himself that it
would be so.

Lalage was crying on his shoulder, sobbing quietly without nois