up the road along which he had torn that
night with his arms around her. She owed him her life and she had gone!
With all a man's inconsequence, it seemed to him as he rose heavily to
his feet and started homeward, that she had repaid him with a certain
amount of ingratitude, that she had left him at the one moment in his
life when he needed her most.

CHAPTER XVI. AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE

The next afternoon, at half-past four, Tavernake was having tea with
Beatrice in the tiny flat which she was sharing with another girl, off
Kingsway. She opened the door to him herself, and though she chattered
ceaselessly, it seemed to him that she was by no means at her ease. She
installed him in the only available chair, an absurd little wicker thing
many sizes too small for him, and seated herself upon the hearth-rug a
few feet away.

"You have soon managed to find me out, Leonard," she remarked.

"Yes," he answered. "I had to go to the stage doorkeeper for your
address."

"He hadn't the slightest right to give it you," she declared.

Tavernake shrugged his shoulders.

"I had to have it," he said simply.

"The power of the purse again!" she laughed. "Now that you are here, I
don't believe that you are a bit glad to see me. Are you?"

He did not answer for a moment. He was thinking of that vigil upon
the Embankment, of the long walk home, of the battle with himself, the
continual striving to tear from his heart this new thing, for which,
with a curious and most masculine inconsistency, he persisted in holding
her responsible.

"You know, Leonard," she continued, getting up abruptly and beginning to
make the tea, "I believe that you are angry with me. If you are, all I
can say is that you are a very foolish person. I had to come away. Can't
you see that?"

"I cannot," he answered stolidly.

She sighed.

"You are not a reasonable person," she declared. "I suppose it is
because you have led such a queer life, and had no womenfolk to look
after you. You don't understand. It was absurd, in a way, that I should
ever have called myself your sister, that we should even have attempted
such a ridiculous experiment. But after--after the other night--"

"Can't we forget that?" he interrupted.

She raised her eyes and looked at him.

"Can you?" she asked.

There was a curious, almost a pleading earnestness in her tone. Her eyes
had something new to say, something which, though it failed to stir his
blood, made him v