tea."

"Your mother is at home?"

"No; she is out of town. She doesn't get back till to-morrow."

"You are going to have tea all alone?"

Allida gazed at him. How should she evade him if he offered to come
back?

"I haven't had my walk yet. I came out for a little walk," she repeated.

By the blurred light of the street lamp he still looked at her, still
held her trembling hand. His face showed his perplexed indecision.
Suddenly he drew the hand within his arm.

"Let us have the little walk, then," he said, "only you must let me come
with you. You are in some great trouble. Don't bother to deny it. Don't
say anything. Your face showed me that something dreadful was happening
to you. Don't speak--I saw it as I was passing on the other side of the
street. The lamp was just lighted, else I shouldn't have recognised you.
Now walk quietly on like this. Don't even think. I'm not a meddling
idiot; I know I'm not. You are desperate about something, and anything,
any one, even a complete stranger, and I'm not that, who steps in
between desperation and an act is justified--perhaps a Godsend."

He was walking beside her, half leading her, talking quickly, as if to
give her time to recover, and glancing at her stricken, helpless face.

As they walked they heard behind them the rattling fall of letters into
a postman's bag; the pillar-box had been emptied.

The youth of the face, its essential childishness, the web of soft hair
that hung disarranged over her cheek, made her look like a very little
girl, and was in strange contrast with the look of terror.

They walked on and on, down streets, across wide, phantasmal squares.

Haldicott held the hand on his arm,--he did not speak,--and Allida felt
herself moving with him through the fog like an Eurydice led by Orpheus,
a shade among the shades. And all the while there hovered before her
thoughts the vision of that quiet room, that white bed, still waiting
for her. Suddenly she broke into sobs. She stopped. She leaned
helplessly against his arm.

"Good heavens! you will tell me now," Haldicott exclaimed. "Cross the
road here. Lean on me. We will go into the park. No one can see you."

She stumbled on blindly beside him, both hands clutching his arm.

All she knew was that she had left life behind her, and yet that she
must go back to that room, and that the room now was more horrible than
the pillar-box had been. She had left life behind her, and yet she
still clung t