head and her golden hair, and
nodded.

There was a four-wheeler at the kerb, and they entered it and sat down
side by side in that restricted compartment, and the fat old driver,
with his red face popping up out of a barrel consisting of scores of
overcoats and aprons, drove off. It was very foggy, but one could see
the lamp-posts.

Geraldine coughed.

'These fogs are simply awful, aren't they?' he remarked.

She made no answer.

'It isn't often they begin as early as this,' he proceeded; 'I suppose
it means a bad winter.'

But she made no answer.

And then a sort of throb communicated itself to him, and then another,
and then he heard a smothered sound. This magnificent creature, this
independent, experienced, strong-minded, superior, dazzling creature was
crying--was, indeed, sobbing. And cabs are so small, and she was so
close. Pleasure may be so keen as to be agonizing: Henry discovered this
profound truth in that moment. In that moment he learnt more about women
than he had learnt during the whole of his previous life. He knew that
her sobbing had some connection with _A Question of Cubits_, but he
could not exactly determine the connection.

'What's the matter?' the blundering fool inquired nervously. 'You
aren't well.'

'I'm so--so ashamed,' she stammered out, when she had patted her eyes
with a fragment of lace.

'Why? What of?'

'I introduced her to you. It's my fault.'

'But what's your fault?'

'This horrible thing that happened.'

She sobbed again frequently.

'Oh, that was nothing!' said Henry kindly. 'You mustn't think about it.'

'You don't know how I feel,' she managed to tell him.

'I wish you'd forget it,' he urged her. 'He didn't mean to be rude.'

'It isn't so much his rudeness,' she wept. 'It's--anyone saying a
thing--like that--about your book. You don't know how I feel.'

'Oh, come!' Henry enjoined her. 'What's my book, anyhow?'

'It's yours,' she said, and began to cry gently, resignedly, femininely.

It had grown dark. The cab had plunged into an opaque sea of blackest
fog. No sound could be heard save the footfalls of the horse, which was
now walking very slowly. They were cut off absolutely from the rest of
the universe. There was no such thing as society, the state, traditions,
etiquette; nothing existed, ever had existed, or ever would exist,
except themselves, twain, in that lost four-wheeler.

Henry had a box of matches in his overcoat pocket. He struck one,