helped to lay. They also smoked many fat Egyptian cigarettes during an
evening of heavy silences, broken by the crunch of subsiding coal and
occasional cries that floated in from neighboring slums across the
stillness of a wet Sunday night.

As Jenny paused on the step of the taxi that was to drive them home,
Jack Danby held her hand very tightly.

"You'll come again?" he asked.

"Of course."

After this first visit Jenny and Irene spent almost every afternoon at
the flat in Greycoat Gardens. Jenny liked the sensation of Jack Danby
brushing against her, of the sudden twitches he would give her hands,
nor did she resent an unexpected kiss with which he once burnt her neck
as she leaned over the table looking at a portfolio of Lancret's
engravings.

Arthur Danby went back to Paris in advance of his brother, and Jenny
fell into the habit of visiting the flat alone. Jack still never
startled her with sudden importunities, never suggested the existence of
another point of view beside her own. He seemed perfectly content to
watch her enjoyment of his luxury and heavy comfort.

One Sunday afternoon in the middle of February--St. Valentine's Eve, to
be precise--when the snowdrops drift in myriads across the London parks,
Jenny went to pay her farewell visit. Jack Danby was leaving England on
the next day to rejoin his brother in Paris. Before she came away from
Stacpole Terrace, Jenny had arranged for Irene to pick her up in the
course of the evening, so that they could go back together. For some
reason she was very particular in exacting a strict promise from Irene
not to fail her.

"What a fuss about nothing," grumbled her friend.

"Oh, well, Ireen, I don't like coming back alone on a Sunday
night. I hate Sunday, and you know it."

Jenny, buried in a big arm-chair, dozed away the afternoon as usual and
after tea sat staring into the fire, while Danby from the hearthrug
assiduously stroked the slim white hand that drooped listlessly over an
arm of the chair. A steady drench of rain had set in with the dusk, and,
being close under the roof, they could hear the gurgle and hiss of the
flooded gutters. Neither of them made a move to turn on the electric
light or stir the lowering fire to flame. Danby even denied himself
three or four cigarettes so that the magnetic current of sensuousness
should not be interrupted. Inch by inch he drew closer to Jenny, sliding
noiselessly over the thick fur of the rug. He was now near