I was worried," he said. "London is too
crowded to think in. I wanted to get myself alone."

"And there I was while you were getting yourself alone, as you call it,
wearing my poor little brains out to think of some story to tell people.
I had to stuff them up you had a sprained knee at Chexington, and for
all I knew any of them might have been seeing you that morning. Besides
what has a boy like you to worry about? It's all nonsense, Poff."

She awaited his explanations. Benham looked for a moment like his
father.

"I'm not getting on, mother," he said. "I'm scattering myself. I'm
getting no grip. I want to get a better hold upon life, or else I do not
see what is to keep me from going to pieces--and wasting existence. It's
rather difficult sometimes to tell what one thinks and feels--"

She had not really listened to him.

"Who is that woman," she interrupted suddenly, "Mrs. Fly-by-Night, or
some such name, who rings you up on the telephone?"

Benham hesitated, blushed, and regretted it.

"Mrs. Skelmersdale," he said after a little pause.

"It's all the same. Who is she?"

"She's a woman I met at a studio somewhere, and I went with her to one
of those Dolmetsch concerts."

He stopped.

Lady Marayne considered him in silence for a little while. "All men,"
she said at last, "are alike. Husbands, sons and brothers, they are all
alike. Sons! One expects them to be different. They aren't different.
Why should they be? I suppose I ought to be shocked, Poff. But I'm not.
She seems to be very fond of you."

"She's--she's very good--in her way. She's had a difficult life...."

"You can't leave a man about for a moment," Lady Marayne reflected.
"Poff, I wish you'd fetch me a glass of water."

When he returned she was looking very fixedly into the fire. "Put it
down," she said, "anywhere. Poff! is this Mrs. Helter-Skelter a discreet
sort of woman? Do you like her?" She asked a few additional particulars
and Benham made his grudging admission of facts. "What I still don't
understand, Poff, is why you have been away."

"I went away," said Benham, "because I want to clear things up."

"But why? Is there some one else?"

"No."

"You went alone? All the time?"

"I've told you I went alone. Do you think I tell you lies, mother?"

"Everybody tells lies somehow," said Lady Marayne. "Easy lies or stiff
ones. Don't FLOURISH, Poff. Don't start saying things like a moral
windmill in a whirlwind. It's all a muddle. I