sound nor movement. Probably Sarah Gailey slept. The dim vision
of the form on the bed and the blue spark of gas in the corner produced
in Hilda a mood of poignant and yet delicious sorrow.

"Why, what's the matter?" George Cannon asked when she had returned to
the parlour.

She knew that her eyes were humid with tears. Both her arms were raised
above her head as she fixed the hat. This act of fixing the hat in
George's presence gave her a new pleasure. She smiled at him.

"Nothing!" she said, whispering mysteriously. "I think she's gone off.
I'm so glad. You know she really does suffer dreadfully."

His look was uncomprehending; but she did not care. The anticipation of
going out with him was now utterly absorbing her.

He waited with his hand on the gas-tap till she was ready, and then he
lowered the gas.

"Wait a moment," she whispered at the door, and with a gesture called
him back into the room from the flagged passage leading to the area
steps.

On the desk was his evening glass of milk, which he drank cold in
summer. She offered it to him in the twilit room like an enraptured
handmaid. He had forgotten it. The fact that he had forgotten it and she
had remembered it yet further increased her strange, mournful, ecstatic
bliss.

"Have some," he whispered, when he had drunk.

She finished the glass, trembling. They went forth, climbing the area
steps with proper precautions and escaping as thieves escape, down the
street. For an instant she glimpsed the wide-open windows of the
drawing-room, and the dining-room, from behind whose illuminated blinds
came floating, as it were wistfully, the sound of song and chatter. She
thought of Sarah Gailey prone and unconscious in the basement. And she
felt the moisture of the milk on her lips. "Am I happy or unhappy?" she
questioned herself, and could not reply. She knew only that she was
thrillingly, smartingly alive.

At the corner of Preston Street and King's Road a landau waited.

"This is ours," said George casually.

"Ours?"

What a splendid masculine idea! How it proved that he too had been
absorbed in the adventure! She admired him humbly, like a girl, like a
little girl. With the most formal deference he helped her into the
carriage.

"Drive towards Shoreham," he commandingly directed the driver, and took
his place by her side.

Yes! He was mature. He was a man of the world. He had had every
experience. He knew how to love. That such a being was hers