rained to gentleness; and know that underneath,
aversion was growing with the thought 'You are keeping me from life, and
love!' till one evening, in sheer nerve-break, she would say or do some
fearful thing, and he would come no more. 'No, Jimmy!' she thought;
'find her, and stay with her. You're not worth all that!' And puffing
to the curtains, as though with that gesture she could shut out her
creeping fate, she turned up the light and sat down at her writing
table. She stayed some minutes motionless, her chin resting on her
hands, the dark silk fallen down from her arms. A little mirror,
framed in curiously carved ivory, picked up by her in an Indian bazaar
twenty-five years ago, hung on a level with her face and gave that face
back to her. 'I'm not ugly,' she thought passionately, 'I'm not. I still
have some looks left. If only that girl hadn't come. And it was all my
doing. Oh, what made me write to both of them, Edward and Jimmy?' She
turned the mirror aside, and took up a pen.

"MY DEAR JIMMY," she wrote: "It will be better for us both if you take
a holiday from here. Don't come again till I write for you. I'm sorry
I made you so much disturbance to-night. Have a good time, and a good
rest; and don't worry. Your--"

So far she had written when a tear dropped on the page, and she had
to tear it up and begin again. This time she wrote to the end--"Your
Leila." 'I must post it now,' she thought, 'or he may not get it before
to-morrow evening. I couldn't go through with this again.' She hurried
out with it and slipped it in a pillar box. The night smelled of
flowers; and, hastening back, she lay down, and stayed awake for hours,
tossing, and staring at the dark.

XIII

1

Leila had pluck, but little patience. Her one thought was to get away
and she at once began settling up her affairs and getting a permit to
return to South Africa. The excitements of purchase and preparation were
as good an anodyne as she could have taken. The perils of the sea
were at full just then, and the prospect of danger gave her a sort of
pleasure. 'If I go down,' she thought, 'all the better; brisk, instead
of long and dreary.' But when she had the permit and her cabin was
booked, the irrevocability of her step came to her with full force.
Should she see him again or no? Her boat started in three days, and she
must decide. If in compunction he were to be affectionate, she knew she
would never keep to her decision, and then t