er overdid her effort to
appear at ease. Agatha looked at her sharply.

"Winny," she said, "you know. You've been there."

Winifred turned towards her quietly, for she could face a crisis.

"Yes," she confessed, "I have, but you're not going to talk about it
until you have had supper. Don't move until I make the coffee."

She was genuinely hungry, but while she satisfied her own appetite she
took care that her companion, who did not seem inclined to eat, made a
simple meal. Then she put the plates into a cupboard and sat down facing
Agatha.

"Well," she said, "you have broken down exactly as that throat
specialist said you would. The first question is, how long it will be
before you can go on again?"

Agatha laughed, a little harsh laugh. "I didn't tell you everything at
the time: I've broken down for good," she answered.

There was a moment of tense silence, and then Agatha made a dejected
gesture. "The specialist warned me that this might happen if I went on
singing, but what could I do? I couldn't cancel my engagements without
telling people why. The physician said I must go to Norway and give my
throat and chest a rest."

They looked at each other, and there was in their eyes the half-bitter,
half-weary smile of those to whom the cure prescribed is ludicrously
impossible. It was Winifred who spoke first.

"Then," she commented, "we have to face the situation, and it's not an
encouraging one. Our joint earnings just keep us here in decency--we
won't say comfort--and they're evidently to be subject to a big
reduction. It strikes me as a rather curious coincidence that a letter
from that man in Canada and one from your prosperous friends in the
country arrived just before you went out."

She saw the look in Agatha's eyes, and spread her hands out.

"Yes," she admitted; "I hid them. It seemed to me that you had quite
enough upon your mind this evening. I don't know whether the letters are
likely to throw any fresh light upon the question what we're going to
do."

She produced the letters from a drawer in her table, and Agatha
straightened herself suddenly in her chair when she had opened the first
of them.

"Oh," she cried, "he wants me to go out to him!"

Winifred's face set hard for a moment, but it relaxed again, and she
contrived to hide her dismay.

"Then," she suggested, "I suppose you'll certainly go. After all, he's
probably not worse to live with than most of them."

Miss Rawlinson was occa