keeping her in the family, and yet she dared not speak.

Her eyes followed June to the door.

It closed.

Then with an exclamation Mrs. Baynes ran forward, wobbling her bulky
frame from side to side, and opened it again.

Too late! She heard the front door click, and stood still, an expression
of real anger and mortification on her face.

June went along the Square with her bird-like quickness. She detested
that woman now whom in happier days she had been accustomed to think so
kind. Was she always to be put off thus, and forced to undergo this
torturing suspense?

She would go to Phil himself, and ask him what he meant. She had the
right to know. She hurried on down Sloane Street till she came to
Bosinney's number. Passing the swing-door at the bottom, she ran up the
stairs, her heart thumping painfully.

At the top of the third flight she paused for breath, and holding on to
the bannisters, stood listening. No sound came from above.

With a very white face she mounted the last flight. She saw the door,
with his name on the plate. And the resolution that had brought her so
far evaporated.

The full meaning of her conduct came to her. She felt hot all over; the
palms of her hands were moist beneath the thin silk covering of her
gloves.

She drew back to the stairs, but did not descend. Leaning against the
rail she tried to get rid of a feeling of being choked; and she gazed at
the door with a sort of dreadful courage. No! she refused to go down.
Did it matter what people thought of her? They would never know! No one
would help her if she did not help herself! She would go through with
it.

Forcing herself, therefore, to leave the support of the wall, she rang
the bell. The door did not open, and all her shame and fear suddenly
abandoned her; she rang again and again, as though in spite of its
emptiness she could drag some response out of that closed room, some
recompense for the shame and fear that visit had cost her. It did not
open; she left off ringing, and, sitting down at the top of the stairs,
buried her face in her hands.

Presently she stole down, out into the air. She felt as though she had
passed through a bad illness, and had no desire now but to get home as
quickly as she could. The people she met seemed to know where she had
been, what she had been doing; and suddenly--over on the opposite side,
going towards his rooms from the direction of Montpellier Square--she saw
Bo