ent.
"I don't know what has come over you, Al'mah," he said helplessly and
with an anxiety he could not disguise. "You can't do that kind of
thing. It isn't fair, it isn't straight business; from a social
standpoint, it isn't well-bred."

"Well-bred!" she retorted with a scornful laugh and a look of angry
disdain. "You once said I had the manners of Madame Sans Gene, the
washer-woman--a sickly joke, it was. Are you going to be my guide in
manners? Does breeding only consist in having clothes made in Savile
Row and eating strawberries out of season at a pound a basket?"

"I get my clothes from the Stores now, as you can see," he said, in a
desperate attempt to be humorous, for she was in a dangerous mood. Only
once before had he seen her so, and he could feel the air charged with
catastrophe. "And I'm eating humble pie in season now at nothing a
dish," he added. "I really am; and it gives me shocking indigestion."

Her face relaxed a little, for she could seldom resist any touch of
humour, but the stubborn and wilful light in her eyes remained.

"That sounds like last year's pantomime," she said, sharply, and, with
a jerk of her shoulders, turned away.

"For God's sake wait a minute, Al'mah!" he urged, desperately. "What
has upset you? What has happened? Before dinner you were yourself;
now--" he threw up his hands in despair--"Ah, my dearest, my star--"

She turned upon him savagely, and it seemed as though a storm of
passion would break upon him; but all at once she changed, came up
close to him, and looked him steadily in the eyes.

"I do not think I trust you," she said, quite quietly.

His eyes could not meet hers fairly. He felt them shrinking from her
inquisition. "You have always trusted me till now. What has happened?"
he asked, apprehensively and with husky voice.

"Nothing has happened," she replied in a low, steady voice. "Nothing.
But I seem to realize you to-night. It came to me suddenly, at dinner,
as I listened to you, as I saw you talk--I had never before seen you in
surroundings like these. But I realized you then: I had a revelation.
You need not ask me what it was. I do not know quite. I cannot tell. It
is all vague, but it is startling, and it has gone through my heart
like a knife. I tell you this, and I tell you quite calmly, that if you
prove to be what, for the first time, I have a vision you are, I shall
never look upon your face again if I can help it. If I come to know
that you are f