do you expect him?" asked Barbara.

"Oh, I don't think anything's been decided yet. And you know how long
these things take. . . . Eric, if I'd had any idea how late it was . . .!"

He accompanied her to the door and returned to find Barbara still
standing, still in her cloak. The flicker of animation which she had
presented on meeting Agnes had died down, and she was again the sport of
man and the plaything of fate.

"I like her, Eric," she remarked thoughtfully. "Why don't you marry her?
Any one can see she's in love with you."

"You're the only person in the world I want to marry," he answered.

Barbara's face twisted in a spasm of pain.

"God! How it hurts when you say that! Eric, I shall make you miserable
and be miserable myself! I love you; you know I love you! But I don't
want to marry you. Why don't you forget me? Go away----"

"Forget you!" Eric gripped her by the shoulders. "What d'you think would
be left, if I lost you?"

Her eyes opened wide with wonder.

"You can't love me as much as that, Eric!"

"I love you so much that I'd sooner have an air-raid to-night and a bomb
on my head here, now, than lose you! You're the whole world to me!"

She shook her head miserably and without hope of flattering reassurance.

"I could have killed myself when you told me that I'd destroyed your
power of work," she whispered. "And to-night, when that girl said that
Jack might never be able to work again . . . It's what I should feel, if
we married and I couldn't bear children! I should be incomplete,
useless!"

"But _you_'re not responsible."

"I might make things easier. . . ."

So compassion was coming to reinforce or supplant vanity. . . . Eric
felt that he knew Barbara's moods in advance. Lady Knightrider--a curse
on her name--had started by setting every nerve on edge; the sight of
Agnes Waring--with Jack's eyes, hair and voice--had completed her
discomfiture; and Barbara had been morbidly drawing one unhappy picture
after another. Jack was incapacitated; and, with his pride, he would
never win through pity what he had failed to win on merit. Incapacitated
or not, Jack was a pauper; and, with his fantastic honour, he would
regard himself as an outcast from Barbara's society.

"Even if he can't go back to the bar," said Eric at length, "his father
will have no difficulty in getting him a job. Lord Waring could take him
on as his agent."

"Oh, I never thought he'd starve! But it must be such a disappo