e strength to get beyond.

'I'm so glad that Dick and Julia are happily married. They're very much
in love with one another.'

'I should have thought love was the worst possible foundation for
marriage,' he answered. 'Love creates illusions, and marriage destroys
them. True lovers should never marry.'

Again silence fell upon them, and again Lucy broke it.

'You're going away to-morrow?'

'I am.'

She looked at him, but he would not meet her eyes. He went over to the
window and looked out upon the busy street.

'Are you very glad to go?'

'You can't think what a joy it is to look upon London for the last time.
I long for the infinite surface of the clean and comfortable sea.'

Lucy gave a stifled sob. Alec started a little, but he did not move. He
still looked down upon the stream of cabs and 'buses, lit by the misty
autumn sun.

'Is there no one you regret to leave, Alec?'

It tore his heart that she should use his name. To hear her say it had
always been like a caress, and the word on her lips brought back once
more the whole agony of his distress; but he would not allow his emotion
to be seen. He turned round and faced her gravely. Now, for the first
time, he did not hesitate to look at her. And while he spoke the words
he set himself to speak, he noticed the exquisite oval of her face, her
charming, soft hair, and her unhappy eyes.

'You see, Dick is married, and so I'm much best out of the way. When a
man takes a wife, his bachelor friends are wise to depart from his life,
gracefully, before he shows them that he needs their company no longer.'

'And besides Dick?'

'I have few friends and no relations. I can't flatter myself that anyone
will be much distressed at my departure.'

'You must have no heart at all,' she said, in a low, hoarse voice.

He clenched his teeth. He was bitterly angry with Julia because she had
exposed him to this unspeakable torture.

'If I had I certainly should not bring it to the _Carlton Hotel_. That
sentimental organ would be surely out of place in such a neighbourhood.'

Lucy sprang to her feet.

'Oh, why do you treat me as if we were strangers? How can you be so
cruel?'

'Flippancy is often the only refuge from an uncomfortable position,' he
answered gravely. 'We should really be much wiser merely to discuss the
weather.'

'Are you angry because I came?'

'That would be very ungracious on my part. Perhaps it wasn't quite
necessary that we should meet again