yes had changed. He put out his hand, but she did
not take it.

"Mister Churchouse has kindly said we can talk in the study, Mister
Ironsyde."

He followed her, and when they had come to the room, hoped that she was
quite well again. Then he sat in a chair by the table and she took a
seat opposite him. She did not reply to his wish for her good health,
but waited for him to speak. She was not sulky, but apparently
indifferent. Her fret and fume were smothered of late. Now that the
supreme injury was inflicted and she had borne a child out of wedlock,
Sabina's frenzies were over. The battle was lost. Life held no further
promises, and the denial of the great promise that it had offered and
taken back again, numbed her. She was weary of the subject of herself
and the child. She could even ask Mr. Churchouse for books to occupy her
mind during convalescence. Yet the slumbering storm in her soul awoke in
full fury before the man had spoken a dozen words.

She looked at Raymond with tired eyes, and he felt that, like himself,
she was older, wiser, different. He measured the extent of her
experiences and felt sorry for her.

"Sabina," he said. "I must apologise for one mistake. When I asked you
to come back to me and live with me, I did a caddish thing. It wasn't
worthy of me, or you. I'm awfully sorry. I forgot myself there."

She flushed.

"Can that worry you?" she asked. "I should have thought, after what
you'd already done, such an added trifle wouldn't have made you think
twice. To ruin a woman body and soul--to lie to her and steal all she's
got to give under pretence of marriage--that wasn't caddish, I
suppose--that wasn't anything to make you less pleased with yourself.
That was what we may expect from men of honour and right bringing up?"

"Don't take this line, or we shan't get on. If, after certain things
happened, I had still felt we--"

"Stop," she said, "and hear me. You're making my blood burn and my
fingers itch to do something. My hands are strong and quick--they're
trained to be quick. I thought I could come to this meeting calm and
patient enough. I didn't know I'd got any hate left in me--for you, or
the world. But I have--you've mighty soon woke it again; and I'm not
going to hear you maul the past into your pattern and explain everything
away and tell me how you came gradually to see we shouldn't be happy
together and all the usual dirty, little lies. Tell yourself falsehoods
if you like--you n