here was the weapon she needed. He
minded their knowing!

"No. Val knows. The others don't; they only know you went away."

She heard him sigh with relief.

"But they shall know," she said firmly, "if you give me cause."

"All right!" he muttered, "hit me! I'm down!"

Winifred went up to the bed. "Look here, Monty! I don't want to hit you.
I don't want to hurt you. I shan't allude to anything. I'm not going
to worry. What's the use?" She was silent a moment. "I can't stand any
more, though, and I won't! You'd better know. You've made me suffer.
But I used to be fond of you. For the sake of that...." She met the
heavy-lidded gaze of his brown eyes with the downward stare of her
green-grey eyes; touched his hand suddenly, turned her back, and went
into her room.

She sat there a long time before her glass, fingering her rings,
thinking of this subdued dark man, almost a stranger to her, on the bed
in the other room; resolutely not 'worrying,' but gnawed by jealousy of
what he had been through, and now and again just visited by pity.

CHAPTER XIV--OUTLANDISH NIGHT

Soames doggedly let the spring come--no easy task for one conscious that
time was flying, his birds in the bush no nearer the hand, no issue from
the web anywhere visible. Mr. Polteed reported nothing, except that his
watch went on--costing a lot of money. Val and his cousin were gone to
the war, whence came news more favourable; Dartie was behaving himself
so far; James had retained his health; business prospered almost
terribly--there was nothing to worry Soames except that he was 'held
up,' could make no step in any direction.

He did not exactly avoid Soho, for he could not afford to let them think
that he had 'piped off,' as James would have put it--he might want
to 'pipe on' again at any minute. But he had to be so restrained and
cautious that he would often pass the door of the Restaurant Bretagne
without going in, and wander out of the purlieus of that region which
always gave him the feeling of having been possessively irregular.

He wandered thus one May night into Regent Street and the most amazing
crowd he had ever seen; a shrieking, whistling, dancing, jostling,
grotesque and formidably jovial crowd, with false noses and
mouth-organs, penny whistles and long feathers, every appanage of
idiocy, as it seemed to him. Mafeking! Of course, it had been relieved!
Good! But was that an excuse? Who were these people, what were they,
where h