hut the door on me and turned me into the street with nothing
but the clothes on me back and what I had in me purse. And he said if I
came back he'd do for me."

She got it out, the abominable history, in a succession of jerks, in a
voice dulled to utter apathy.

And an intolerable pity held him silent before this beaten thing,
although with every word she dragged him nearer to the ultimate,
foreseen disaster.

She went on.

"I was scared to walk about the streets all night in these things. I
always was more afraid of that than anything. Though _he_ never would
believe me when I said so. You don't know the names he called me. So I
took a taxi and I went to the first hotel I could think of--the
Thackeray. But I hadn't enough money with me, and they wouldn't take me
in. Then I went and sat in the waiting-room at Euston Station till they
closed. Then I sat outside on the platform and pretended to be waitin'
for a train. _He_ wouldn't believe me if I told him I'd spent the night
in that station. But I did. And I got me death of cold. And in the
morning me cough started, and they wouldn't take me in any of the shops
because of it.

"I tried all morning. Starker's first. Then in the afternoon I went to
Father, and he wouldn't have me. He won't believe I haven't been bad,
because of me things and me cough. I suppose he thinks I've got
consumption or something. He saw me coming in at the gate and he turned
me out straight. I didn't even get to the door."

"He couldn't--"

"He did--reelly, Ranny, he did. He said he'd washed his hands of me and
I could go back to you. He said--No, I can't tell you what he said."

There was no need to tell. He knew.

She looked at him now, straight, for the first time.

"Ranny--he knows. He knows what we did."

"Did you tell him?"

"Not me! He'd guessed it. He'd guessed it all the time. Trust _him_. And
he taxed me with it. And I lied. I wasn't goin' to have him thinkin'
_that_ of you."

"Of _me_?"

"Yes--_you_." It was her first flash of feeling since she began her
tale. "It doesn't matter what he thinks of me. I told him so."

"Well? Then?"

"Then I started lookin' for work again. Couldn't get any. Then I came
here. If you turn me out there'll be nothing but the streets. If I was
to get work nobody'll keep me. I haven't properly got over that illness.
I'm so weak I couldn't stand to do anything long. There are times when I
can hardly hold myself together."

And still ther