owered him
gently into it.

Noticing that he was seated, Mr. Stone raised his manuscript and read
on: "'---were pursued regardless of fraternity. It was as though a herd
of horn-ed cattle driven through green pastures to that Gate, where they
must meet with certain dissolution, had set about to prematurely
gore and disembowel each other, out of a passionate devotion to those
individual shapes which they were so soon to lose. So men--tribe against
tribe, and country against country--glared across the valleys with their
ensanguined eyes; they could not see the moonlit wings, or feel the
embalming airs of brotherhood.'"

Slower and slower came his sentences, and as the last word died away he
was heard to be asleep, breathing through a tiny hole left beneath the
eave of his moustache. Hilary, who had waited for that moment, gently
put the manuscript on the desk, and beckoned to the girl. He did not ask
her to his study, but spoke to her in the hall.

"While Mr. Stone is like this he misses you. You will come, then, at
present, please, so long as Hughs is in prison. How do you like your
room?"

The little model answered simply: "Not very much."

"Why not?"

"It's lonely there. I shan't mind, now I'm coming here again."

"Only for the present," was all Hilary could find to say.

The little model's eyes were lowered.

"Mrs. Hughs' baby's to be buried to-morrow," she said suddenly.

"Where?"

"In Brompton Cemetery. Mr. Creed's going."

"What time is the funeral?"

The girl looked up stealthily.

"Mr. Creed's going to start at half-past nine."

"I should like to go myself," said Hilary.

A gleam of pleasure passing across her face was instantly obscured
behind the cloud of her stolidity. Then, as she saw Hilary move nearer
to the door, her lip began to droop.

"Well, good-bye," he said.

The little model flushed and quivered. 'You don't even look at me,' she
seemed to say; 'you haven't spoken kindly to me once.' And suddenly she
said in a hard voice:

"Now I shan't go to Mr. Lennard's any more."

"Oh, then you have been to him!"

Triumph at attracting his attention, fear of what she had admitted,
supplication, and a half-defiant shame--all this was in her face.

"Yes," she said.

Hilary did not speak.

"I didn't care any more when you told me I wasn't to come here."

Still Hilary did not speak.

"I haven't done anything wrong," she said, with tears in her voice.

"No, no," said Hilary; "of co