e or
movement, as overwrought women do; but it was soon over, and she pulled
herself together bravely.

"I think you're very tired and we had better have some tea now," she
said, smiling at him with wet eyes. He kissed away her tears, then
released her, and sat down whilst she hurried into the kitchen to
prepare the tray.

It was very much later, in fact not until after they had finished the
supper, which she insisted should come from the next street--"Because it
was so nice last time," she explained--that he went back to the subject
of their future. He was so desperately in earnest that he succeeded in
blinding himself to the financial difficulties ahead; and, though
perhaps he did not convince either Lalage or himself, they were both in
the mood to risk things.

"I'll give up my rooms at Mrs. Benn's, thankfully, and we can take some
others, somewhere near Fleet Street, until we can get on our feet," he
went on.

But Lalage demurred. "I can't give up this flat, at least not without
losing all I've paid on the furniture, until the end of my agreement, in
six months' time. Why shouldn't we stay on here?"

Jimmy frowned. He loathed the place and all its associations, but he was
not in a position to give her another home of her own, as yet, and he
could not answer her argument, especially when she added:

"I can tell them at the agent's office that we are married, and we can
give them some name or other."

She said it simply, without the least intention of hurting him; but the
words cut him like a whip, for though, for one mad moment, he had
thought of marriage, real marriage, he had put the idea on one side as
utterly impossible. He was a Grierson, owing a duty to the family, and
he could not do the thing. Only he had the grace not even to hint of it
to her, and she gave no sign that she had the least expectation of any
promise from him. She had recovered her spirits, and, apparently, was
quite content with the arrangement he proposed. He was fully conscious
that Society would condemn him unsparingly, if it found out, and he
could not justify his own conduct, even to himself; but Lalage never
seemed to consider the moral aspect of the question, that curious
element of irresponsibility, almost childishness, which he had marked at
the very outset, was now more noticeable than ever.

Suddenly, a new fear gripped him. "It will never do to give my people
this address," he said. "They would make inquiries at once, and