as I know, that's all I've done!"

"Of course!"

This wonderful "of course" acted on Hilary like a tonic. He said dryly:

"What do you wish me to do?"

"I?" No gust of the east wind, making the young leaves curl and shiver,
the gas jets flare and die down in their lamps, could so have nipped
the flower of amity. Through Hilary's mind flashed Stephen's almost
imploring words: "Oh, I wouldn't go to her! Women are so funny!"

He looked round. A blue gauze scarf was wrapped over his wife's dark
head. There, in her corner, as far away from him as she could get, she
was smiling. For a moment Hilary had the sensation of being stiffed by
fold on fold of that blue gauze scarf, as if he were doomed to drive for
ever, suffocated, by the side of this woman who had killed his love for
her.

"You will do what you like, of course," she said suddenly.

A desire to laugh seized Hilary. "What do you wish me to do?" "You will
do what you like, of course!" Could civilised restraint and tolerance go
further?

"B." he said, with an effort, "the wife is jealous. We put the girl into
that house--we ought to get her out."

Blanca's reply came slowly.

"From the first," she said, "the girl has been your property; do what
you like with her. I shall not meddle."

"I am not in the habit of regarding people as my property."

"No need to tell me that--I have known you twenty years."

Doors sometimes slam in the minds of the mildest and most restrained of
men.

"Oh, very well! I have told you; you can see Hughs when he comes--or
not, as you like."

"I have seen him."

Hilary smiled.

"Well, was his story very terrible?"

"He told me no story."

"How was that?"

Blanca suddenly sat forward, and threw back the blue scarf, as though
she, too, were stifling. In her flushed face her eyes were bright as
stars; her lips quivered.

"Is it likely," she said, "that I should listen? That's enough, please,
of these people."

Hilary bowed. The cab, bearing them fast home, turned into the last
short cut. This narrow street was full of men and women circling round
barrows and lighted booths. The sound of coarse talk and laughter
floated out into air thick with the reek of paraffin and the scent of
frying fish. In every couple of those men and women Hilary seemed to
see the Hughs, that other married couple, going home to wedded happiness
above the little model's head. The cab turned out of the gay alley.

"Enough, please, of these peo