he touch of her lips was moist and hot. The
scent of stale violet powder came from her, warmed by her humanity. It
penetrated to Hilary's heart. He started back in sheer physical revolt.

Thus repulsed, the girl stood rigid, her breast heaving, her eyes
unnaturally dilated, her mouth still loosened by the kiss. Snatching
from his pocket a roll of notes, Hilary flung them on the bed.

"I can't take you!" he almost groaned. "It's madness! It's impossible!"
And he went out into the passage. He ran down the steps and got into his
cab. An immense time seemed to pass before it began to move. It started
at last, and Hilary sat back in it, his hands clenched, still as a dead
man.

His mortified face was recognised by the landlady, returning from her
morning's visit to the shops. The gentleman looked, she thought, as if
he had received bad news! She not unnaturally connected his appearance
with her lodger. Tapping on the girl's door, and receiving no answer,
she went in.

The little model was lying on the dismantled bed, pressing her face into
the blue and white ticking of the bolster. Her shoulders shook, and a
sound of smothered sobbing came from her. The landlady stood staring
silently.

Coming of Cornish chapel-going stock, she had never liked this girl, her
instinct telling her that she was one for whom life had already been too
much. Those for whom life had so early been too much, she knew, were
always "ones for pleasure!" Her experience of village life had enabled
her to construct the little model's story--that very simple, very
frequent little story. Sometimes, indeed, trouble of that sort was soon
over and forgotten; but sometimes, if the young man didn't do the right
thing by her, and the girl's folk took it hardly, well, then---! So had
run the reasoning of this good woman. Being of the same class, she had
looked at her lodger from the first without obliquity of vision.

But seeing her now apparently so overwhelmed, and having something soft
and warm down beneath her granitic face and hungry eyes, she touched her
on the back.

"Come, now!" she said; "you mustn't take on! What is it?"

The little model shook off the hand as a passionate child shakes itself
free of consolation. "Let me alone!" she muttered.

The landlady drew back. "Has anyone done you a harm?" she said.

The little model shook her head.

Baffled by this dumb grief, the landlady was silent; then, with the
stolidity of t