ou into a cab."

"No," she said, "I prefer to walk. I am going straight back to the
Langham. Will you go to the Ducies' At Home to-night?"

"Yes," he said, "just to see you."

"You'll know more by then."

"I shall know all there is to know."

"Luke," she said, "you are not afraid?"

It was the second time she had put the question to him, but this time
its purport was a very different one. He understood it nevertheless,
for he replied simply:

"Only for you."

"Why for me?"

"Because, Lou, you are just all the world to me--and a man must feel a
little afraid when he thinks he may lose the world."

"Not me, Luke," she said, "you would not lose me--whatever happened."

"Let me get you a cab."

He was English, you see, and could not manage to say anything just
then. The floodgates of sentiment might burst asunder now with the
slightest word uttered that was not strictly commonplace. Louisa
understood, else she had not loved him as she did. It never occurred
to her to think that he was indifferent. Nay more! his sudden
transition from sentiment to the calling of a cab--from sentiment to
the trivialities of life pleased her in its very essence of
incongruity.

"I said I would walk," she reminded him, smiling.

Then she gave him her hand. It was still gloveless and he took it in
his, turning the palm upward so that he might bury his lips in its
delicately perfumed depths. His kiss almost scalded her flesh, his
lips were burning hot. Passion held in check will consume with inward
fire, whilst its expression often cools like the Nereid's embrace.

He went to the door with her and watched her slender, trim figure
walking rapidly away until it disappeared round the corner of the
Square.

When he turned back into the hall, he found himself face to face with
Lord Radclyffe. Not Uncle Rad--but an altogether different man, an old
man now with the cynical lines round the mouth accentuated and
deepened into furrows, the eyes hollow and colourless, the shoulders
bent as if under an unbearable load.

"Uncle Rad," said Luke speaking very gently, forcing his voice to
betray nothing of anxiety or surprise, "can I do anything for you?"

But even at sight of his nephew, of the man who had hitherto always
succeeded in dissipating by his very presence every cloud on the
misanthrope's brow, even at sight of him Lord Radclyffe seemed to
shrink within himself, his face became almost ashen in its pallor, and
lines of cruel h