I, without answering,
Hold myself quietly concealed,
A bit to tease him, and a bit so as not to die
At our first meeting: and then, a little troubled,
He will call, he will call:
'Dear baby-wife of mine, dear little orange-blossom!'
The names he used to call me when he came here_. . . ."

"My dear, why don't you use that beautiful voice of yours more?" asked
Lady Poynter, as she ended.

Barbara's face was in shadow, but Eric could see that she was looking
across the room at him.

"Oh, not one person in ten million ever wants me to sing," she laughed,
as she came back to the table.

Five minutes later she opened her purse, pushed a note across to Lady
Poynter and came up to Eric with a smile of gratitude.

"I hope I haven't been long," she said. "Shall we see if we can find a
taxi?"

5

They crossed Belgrave Square and reached Hyde Park Corner in silence.
Then Eric felt a drag at his arm, and Barbara whispered: "I'm so tired!"

"I'm afraid there's not a taxi in sight," he said. "Shall we go by tube
to Dover Street?"

"We may meet a taxi. Eric, d'you remember the first time----"

He shook free of her arm, as though it were eating into his flesh.

"You felt the evening wouldn't be complete without that--after
'Butterfly'?" he asked.

Barbara stood still, swaying slightly until he caught her wrist.

"I'm shutting my eyes and thinking of the past, the time when we were
happy," she gasped. "I can't face the present."

"You can face it as philosophically as I can," he answered. "If love
were stronger than vanity . . . I don't blame you. I only blame myself
because I was fool enough to believe a woman's word, fool enough to
think that, if I gave her everything, she might give me something in
return; that, if I shewed her enough magnanimity, I might shame her into
being magnanimous. I was hopelessly uneducated in those days."

Barbara held up her hands as though each word struck her in the face.

"D'you _want_ to part like this?" she whispered. "Wouldn't you rather
remember the times when I came to you and cried--and you made me happy?
I came to you when I was ill; and you just kissed me or stroked my
forehead, and I was better. And once or twice, when you were ill, I came
to you and laid your head on my breast. . . . Wouldn't you rather
remember _that_, darling?"

"If I could only forget it, I shouldn't regret so bitterly the day when
we first met."

She swayed again and caugh