earched in his mind for the
location of suitable flats.

"Is it true that thou didst carry me in thine arms?" repeated
Christine.

He murmured into her mouth:

"Is it true? Can she doubt? The proof, then."

And he picked her up as though she had been a doll, and carried her
into the bedroom. As she lay on the bed, she raised her arm and looked
at the broken wrist-watch and sighed.

"My mascot. It is not a _blague_, my mascot."

Shortly afterwards she began to cry again, at first gently; then sobs
supervened.

"She must sleep," he said firmly.

She shook her head.

"I cannot. I have been too upset. It is impossible that I should
sleep."

"She must."

"Go and buy me a drug."

"If I go and buy her a drug, will she undress and get into bed while I
am away?"

She nodded.

Calling Marthe, and taking the latch-key of the street-door, he went
to his chemist's in Dover Street and bought some potassium bromide and
sal volatile. When he came back Marthe whispered to him:

"She sleeps. She has told me everything as I undressed her. The poor
child!"

Chapter 32

MRS. BRAIDING

G.J. went home at once, partly so that Christine should not be
disturbed, partly because he desired solitude in order to examine and
compose his mind. Mrs. Braiding had left an agreeable modest fire--fit
for cold April--in the drawing-room. He had just sat down in front of
it and was tranquillising himself in the familiar harmonious beauty
of the apartment (which, however, did seem rather insipid after the
decorative excesses of Queen's room), when he heard footsteps on
the little stairway from the upper floor. Mrs. Braiding entered the
drawing-room.

This was a Mrs. Braiding very different from the Mrs. Braiding of
1914, a shameless creature of more rounded contours than of old, and
not quite so spick and span as of old. She was carrying in her arms
that which before the war she could not have conceived herself as
carrying. The being was invisible in wraps, but it was there; and she
seemed to have no shame for it, seemed indeed to be proud of it and
defiant about it.

Braiding's military career had been full of surprises. He had expected
within a few months of joining the colours to be dashing gloriously
and homicidally at panic-stricken Germans across the plains of
Flanders, to be, in fact, saving the Empire at the muzzle of rifle
and the point of bayonet. In truth, he found that for interminable,
innumerable weeks his