er usual
almost cynical calm.

"You'd be much better to sit down," he said, soothingly. "You see, if
you stand, so must I, and it's such an uncomfortable way of talking."

She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, took off her gloves,
and two absurd small thumbs appeared above its edge, the knuckles white
and tense with the strength of her grip.

Anthony seated himself in a deep chair beside the fireplace. He was in
shadow. Meg faced the light, and he was shocked at the appearance of the
little smitten face.

"Now tell me," he said gently, "just as little or as much as you like."

"This morning," she said hoarsely, "I ran away with a man ... in a
motor-car."

Anthony was certainly startled, but all he said was, "That being the
case, why are you here, my dear, and what have you done with him?"

"He was married...."

"Have you only just found that out?"

"No, I knew it all along. His wife is hard and disagreeable and older
than he is ... and he's thirty-five ... and they can't live together,
and she won't divorce him and he can't divorce her ... and I loved him
so much and thought how beautiful it would be to give up everything and
make it up to him."

"Yes?" said Anthony, for Meg paused as though unable to go on.

"And it seemed very wonderful and noble to do this, and I forgot my poor
little Papa and those boys in India, and you and Jan and Fay and ... I
was very mad and very happy ... till this morning, when we actually went
off in his car."

"But where," Anthony asked in a voice studiously even and quiet, "_are_
he and his car?"

"I don't know," Meg said hopelessly, "unless they're still at the place
where we had lunch ... and I don't suppose he'd stay there all this
time...."

Anthony felt a great desire to laugh, but Meg looked so woebegone and
desperately serious that he restrained the impulse and said very kindly:
"I don't yet understand how, having embarked upon such an enterprise,
you happen to be here ... alone. Did you quarrel at lunch, or what?"

"We didn't _have_ lunch," Meg exclaimed with a sob. "At least, I didn't
... it was the lunch that did it."

"Did what?"

"Made me realise what I had done, and go away."

"Meg dear," said Anthony, striving desperately to keep his voice steady,
"was it a very bad lunch?"

"I don't know," she answered with the utmost seriousness. "We hadn't
begun; we were just going to, when I noticed his hands, and his nails
were dirty, and they looked