e was no feeling in her voice, and barely the suggestion
of appeal; only the flat tones of the last extremity.

"I've come here because I'm afraid of going to the bad. I don't want to
be bad--not reelly bad. But I'll be driven to it if you turn me out."

It might have been a threat she held out to him but that her voice
lacked the passion of all menace. Passion could not have served her
better than her dull, unvibrating statement of the fact.

"If you won't take me back--"

Her spent voice dropped dead on the last word and her cough broke out
again.

Ransome's next movement averted it. She revived suddenly.

"Ranny--are you going for that cab?"

He turned.

"No," he said. "You know I'm not."

"Then, what are you thinking of?"

* * * * *

He was thinking: "I won't have Dossie and Stanny sleeping with her. And
I can't turn Mother out. So there's no room for her. Yes, there is. I
can get a camp bed and put it in the box room. I shall be all right in
there, and she can have my room to herself."

No other arrangement seemed endurable or possible to him.

And yet, while his flesh cried out in the agony of its repulsion, it
knew that in the years, the terrible, interminable years before them, it
could not be as he had planned. There would be a will stronger than his
own will that would not be frustrated.

And he told himself that he could have borne it if it had not been for
that.

There was a knocking at the door. The handle turned, and through the
slender opening which was all she dared make, Mrs. Ransome spoke to her
son.

"Ranny, do you know you've left the front door open? Who's that
coughing?" she said.

Neither of them answered.

"Hasn't Winny gone yet? You shouldn't keep her out so late, dear. It's
time both of you were in bed."

At that he rose and went to her.

* * * * *

Presently they could be heard moving Stanny's little cot into his
grandmother's room.

That night Violet slept in Ransome's bed.

Ransome lay on the sofa in the front sitting-room. He did not sleep, and
at dawn he got up and looked out. The rain had ceased. It was the
beginning of a perfect day.

He remembered then that he had promised Winny to walk with her to
Wimbledon Common.

CHAPTER XXXII

"She's ill. Fair gone to pieces. But the doctor says she'll soon be all
right again if we take care of her."

It was early evening of Sunday. They were