feminine presence; she demanded no court, no care, no carpet for her
way; she could come and go unnoticed and unattended; you could
overlook her--though she never overlooked you or anything else. She
had her points certainly, she was loyal to the core--she would be
loyal to him, he was sure, in this scrape, with a silly wrong-headed
loyalty, more like a man's to a woman than a woman's to a man. She was
loyal to her none too reputable family--that family was a bitter thing
to his pride of race. She was courageous, too, cheerfully enduring,
laughing in the face of disaster, patient when action was impossible
and when it was possible--he found himself smiling when he recalled
her--surely there was never one more gay, more ready, more steady,
more quietly alert than she when there was a struggle with men or
matters in the wind. She had brains of a sort, there was no doubt of
that; it was possible to imagine one would not grow tired of her
undiluted company as one would of the other sort of woman. Only of
course a man did not have the undiluted company of his wife--perhaps
if he were a small shop-keeper or an itinerant organ-grinder--if night
and day they lived together and worked together and looked out on the
world together--if it was the simple life of which she dreamed--

Rawson-Clew picked up his pen and began to write; it was not a case of
whether he would or would not, liked or disliked; he had simply to
make a girl he had compromised the only restitution in his power.

In the meantime Julia had set out for the market-place as the idlers
had said. But her business there did not take long and she was home
again, as she intended, before Mevrouw got back from the Snieders. But
she had not been in much more than five minutes before the old lady,
supported by Vrouw Snieder and Denah, arrived. Mijnheer came home not
long after, and, hearing news of the return of the truant, went to the
house to join the others.

Julia waited to receive the attack in the dim sitting-room. She knew
as well as Rawson-Clew, or better, that she had not a ghost of a
chance of clearing herself; dismissal was inevitable; that was why she
went to the market-place. She had not largely assisted her family in
living by their wits without having those faculties in exceeding good
working order; she had already seen and seized the only thing open to
her when the end should come. But the fact that she knew how it would
end did not prevent her from givi