ow selfish of me! I ought to have known," she remarked. "Let someone
take your bag."

"I don't know where I'm going to stop. I'll leave it at the station for
the present."

"Aren't you going home?" she asked in some surprise.

"We'll talk over everything when I've got warm."

She waited while he left his bag in the cloak-room. When he joined her,
they walked along the street leading from the station.

"I could have seen what's up with you without being told," he remarked
ungenially.

"It won't be for so very long. I shall look all right again some day,"
she declared, with a sad little laugh.

"That's the worst of women," he went on. "Just when you think
everything's all right, this goes and happens."

His words fired her blood.

"I should have thought you would have been very proud," she cried.

"Eh!"

"However foolish I've been, I'm not the ordinary sort of woman. Where
I've been wrong is in being too kind to you."

She paused for breath. She was also a little surprised at her bold
words; she was so completely at the man's mercy.

"I do appreciate it. I'd be a fool if I didn't. But it's this
development that's so inconvenient."

"Inconvenient! Inconvenient you call it--!"

"This will do us," he interrupted, pausing at the doorway of the
"King's Arms Hotel."

"I'm not sure I'll come in."

"Please yourself. But it's as well to have a talk, so that we can see
exactly where we stand."

His words voiced the present desire of her heart. She was burning to
put an end to her suspense, to find out exactly where she stood. The
comparative comfort of the interior of the hotel thawed his coldness.

"Rather a difficult little Mavis," he smiled as they ascended the
stairs.

"I'm all right till I'm roused. Then I feel capable of anything."

"The sort of girl I admire," he admitted.

He engaged a sitting-room and bedroom for the night. Mavis did not
trouble to consider what relation to Perigal the hotel people believed
her to be. Her one concern was to discover his intentions with regard
to the complication which had arisen in her life. She ordered tea.
While it was being got ready, she sat by the newly-lit fire, a prey to
gloomy thoughts. The pain in her face had, in a measure, abated. She
was alone, Perigal having gone to the bedroom to wash after his
journey. She contrasted her present misery with the joyousness that had
possessed her when last she had been under the same roof as her lover.
Tears welle