g down to Southampton?' she asked.

'I am, indeed,' he answered. 'I shall hide my face on Alec's shoulder
and weep salt tears. It will be most affecting, because in moments of
emotion I always burst into epigram.'

Alec sprang to his feet. There was a bitterness in his face which was in
odd contrast with Dick's light words.

'I loathe all solemn leave-takings,' he said. 'I prefer to part from
people with a nod or a smile, whether I'm going for ever or for a day to
Brighton.'

'I've always assured you that you're a monster of inhumanity,' said Mrs.
Lomas, laughing difficultly.

He turned to her with a grim smile.

'Dick has been imploring me for twenty years to take life flippantly. I
have learnt at last that things are only grave if you take them gravely,
and that is desperately stupid. It's so hard to be serious without being
absurd. That is the chief power of women, that life and death for them
are merely occasions for a change of costume, marriage a creation in
white, and the worship of God an opportunity for a Paris bonnet.'

Julia saw that he was determined to keep the conversation on a level of
amiable persiflage, and with her lively sense of the ridiculous she
could hardly repress a smile at the heaviness of his hand. Through all
that he said pierced the bitterness of his heart, and his every word was
contradicted by the vehemence of his tortured voice. She was determined,
too, that the interview which she had brought about, uncomfortable as it
had been to all of them, should not be brought to nothing;
characteristically she went straight to the point. She stood up.

'I'm sure you two have things to say to one another that you would like
to say alone.'

She saw Alec's eyes grow darker as he saw himself cornered, but she was
implacable.

'I have some letters to send off by the American mail, and I want Dick
to look over them to see that I've spelt _honour_ with a u and
_traveller_ with a double l.'

Neither Alec nor Lucy answered, and the determined little woman took her
husband firmly away. When they were left alone, neither spoke for a
while.

'I've just realised that you didn't know I was coming to-day,' said Lucy
at last. 'I had no idea that you were being entrapped. I would never
have consented to that.'

'I'm very glad to have an opportunity of saying good-bye to you,' he
answered.

He preserved the conversational manner of polite society, and it seemed
to Lucy that she would never have th