eless loud bang. The bang might waken the entire household,
but Mrs. Prohack did not care. Mrs. Prohack kissed him without a word.
He possessed in his heart a barometric scale of her kisses, and this was
a set-fair kiss, a kiss with a somewhat violent beginning and a
reluctant close. Then she held her cheek for him to kiss. Both cheek and
lips were freshly cold from the night air. Mr. Prohack was aware of an
immense, romantic felicity. And he immediately became flippant, not
aloud, but secretly, to hide himself from himself.

He thought:

"It's a positive fact that I've been kissing this girl of a woman for a
quarter of a century, and she's fat."

But beneath his flippancy and beneath his felicity there was a
lancinating qualm, which, if he had expressed it he would have expressed
thus:

"If anything _did_ happen to her, it would be the absolute ruin of me."

The truth was that his felicity frightened him. Never before had he been
seriously concerned for her well-being. The reaction from grave alarm
lighted up the interior of his mysterious soul with a revealing flash of
unique intensity.

"What are all these lights burning for?" she murmured. Lights were
indeed burning everywhere. He had been in a mood to turn on but not to
turn off.

"Oh!" he said, "I was just wandering about."

"I'll go straight upstairs," she said, trying to be as matter-of-fact as
her Arthur appeared to be.

When he had leisurely set the whole of the ground-floor to rights, he
followed her. She was waiting for him in the boudoir. She had removed
her hat and mantle, and lighted one of the new radiators, and was
sitting on the sofa.

"There came a telegram from Charlie," she began. "I was crossing the
hall just as the boy reached the door. So I opened the door myself. It
was from Charlie to say that he would be at the Grand Babylon Hotel
to-night."

"Charlie! The Grand Babylon!... Not Buckingham Palace." Eve ignored his
crude jocularity.

"It seems I ought to have received it early in the afternoon. I was so
puzzled I didn't know what to do--I just put my things on and went off
to the hotel at once. It wasn't till after I was in the taxi that I
remembered I ought to have told the servants where I was going. That's
why I hurried back. I wanted to get back before you did. Charlie
suggested telephoning from the hotel, but I wouldn't let him on any
account."

"Why not?"

"Well, I thought you might be upset and wonder what on earth was