Are you cooler now?"

"Much cooler, thanks to you."

The call came a second time. Louisa hurried forward; Jim followed her.
Neither of them noticed the listening girl behind the curtain. The
next moment loud cheers filled the room as Hardy and Louisa took their
places side by side in the front of the stage.

Alison waited until the great uproar had subsided, then she slipped
into the dressing room where she had gone on her arrival, put on her
hat and jacket steadily and calmly, and went home. She had no
intention now of waiting for Jim. She never meant to wait for Jim any
more. He was false as no man had ever been false before. She would
forget him, she would drive him out of her life. He had dared to come
and talk of marriage to her when he really loved another girl; he had
dared to give her words of tenderness when his heart was with Louisa
Clay.

"It is all over," whispered Alison quite quietly under her breath.

She wondered, in a dull sort of fashion, why she felt so quiet; why she
did not suffer a great deal more; why the sense of disappointment and
cruel desertion did not break her heart. She was sure that by and by
her heart would awaken, and pain--terrible, intense pain would be her
portion; but just now she felt quiet and stunned. She was glad of
this. It was Christmas Eve, but Jim was not walking home with her.
The Christmas present she had hoped for was not to be hers. Well,
never mind, to-morrow would be Christmas Day. Jim was invited to
dinner, to that good dinner which Grannie had no right to buy, but
which Grannie had bought to give the children one last happy day.
Alison herself had made the cake and had frosted it, and Alison herself
had stirred the pudding, and had thought of Jim's face as it would look
when he sat with the children round the family board. He would never
sit there now; she must never see him again. She would write to him
the moment she got in, and then, having put him out of her life once
and for ever, she would help Grannie to keep the Merry Christmas.

She walked up the weary number of steps to the flat on the fifth floor.
She found the key under the mat, and then went in. Grannie had left
everything ready for her. Grannie had thought of a betrothed maiden
who would enter the little house with the air of a queen who had come
suddenly into her kingdom. Grannie, who was sound asleep at this
moment, had no idea that Despair itself was coming home in the last
h