anything to Father; one must
simply let him suppose that she has got tired of it."

Again Hilary nodded.

"He will think it very funny,", murmured Cecilia pensively. "Oh, and
have you thought that taking her away from where she is will only make
those people talk the more?"

Hilary shrugged his shoulders.

"It may make that man furious," Cecilia added.

"It will."

"Oh, but then, of course, if you don't see her afterwards, they will
have no--no excuse at all."

"I shall not see her afterwards," said Hilary, "if I can avoid it."

Cecilia looked at him.

"It's very sweet of you, Hilary."

"What is sweet?" asked Hilary stonily.

"Why, to take all this trouble. Is it really necessary for you to do
anything?" But looking in his face, she went on hastily: "Yes, yes, it's
best. Let's go at once. Oh, those people in the drawing-room! Do wait
ten minutes."

A little later, running up to put her hat on, she wondered why it was
that Hilary always made her want to comfort him. Stephen never affected
her like this.

Having little or no notion where to go, they walked in the direction of
Bayswater. To place the Park between Hound Street and the little model
was the first essential. On arriving at the other side of the Broad
Walk, they made instinctively away from every sight of green. In a long,
grey street of dismally respectable appearance they found what they were
looking for, a bed-sitting room furnished, advertised on a card in the
window. The door was opened by the landlady, a tall woman of narrow
build, with a West-Country accent, and a rather hungry sweetness running
through her hardness. They stood talking with her in a passage, whose
oilcloth of variegated pattern emitted a faint odour. The staircase
could be seen climbing steeply up past walls covered with a shining
paper cut by narrow red lines into small yellow squares. An almanack,
of so floral a design that nobody would surely want to steal it, hung
on the wall; below it was an umbrella stand without umbrellas. The dim
little passage led past two grimly closed doors painted rusty red to two
half-open doors with dull glass in their panels. Outside, in the street
from which they had mounted by stone steps, a shower of sleet had begun
to fall. Hilary shut the door, but the cold spirit of that shower had
already slipped into the bleak, narrow house.

"This is the apartment, m'm," said the landlady, opening the first of
the rusty-coloured doors. The room