kness, it was so
intense.

"No," she said out loud, "it won't. It will be all wrong."

"I don't agree with you. Anyhow, I'm going to take you back. Come."

"No," she said, "not yet. Mayn't we stay here a little longer?"

"No, we mayn't. You've got your death of cold as it is."

"I'm not cold, now. I'm warm. Feel my hands."

She held them out to him. He did not touch them. But he put his arm
round her and raised her to her feet. And they went back together along
the narrow Cliff-path. It was dangerous in the perishing light. He took
her hands in his now, and led her sidelong. When her feet slipped in the
slimy chalk, he held her up with his arm.

At the little gate she turned to him.

"I was kind to Bunny," she said, "I was really."

"I am sure," he said gently, "you are kind to everybody."

"That's something, isn't it?"

"I'm not sure that it isn't everything."

They went up the side of the garden, along the shrubbery, by a path that
led to the main entrance of the hotel. A great ring of white light lay
on the wet ground before the porch, thrown from the electric lamps
within.

Mrs. Tailleur stepped back into the darkness by the shrubbery. "Look
here," she said, "I'm going in by myself. You are going round another
way. You have not seen me. You don't know where I am. You don't know
anything about me."

"I know," said Lucy, "you are coming in with me."

She drew farther back. "I'm not thinking of myself," she said, "I'm
thinking of you."

She was no longer like a child. Her voice had suddenly grown older.

"Are you?" he said. "Then you'll do what I ask you." He held her with
his arm and drew her, resisting and unresisting, close to him.

"Ah," she cried, "what are you going to do with me?"

"I am going," he said, "to take you to my sister."

And he went with her, up the steps and into the lighted vestibule, past
the hall-porter and the clerk in his bureau and the manager's wife in
hers, straight into the lounge, before the Colonel and his wife, and he
led her to Jane where she sat in her place beside the hearth.

"It isn't half such a bad night as it looks," said he in a clear voice.
"Is it, Mrs. Tailleur?"

CHAPTER X

Five minutes later Lucy was talking to Colonel and Mrs. Hankin, with
genial unconcern. They never knew that he knew what they had been
saying, or how their tongues had scourged Mrs. Tailleur out into the
lash of the rain. They never knew that the young man who conversed