ave _her_--"

"Dear," he vowed, "I have been a brute. I will end all that. I will
end all that."

He took her suddenly into his arms and kissed her.

"Oh, I _know_ I'm stupid," she said.

"You're not. It's I have been stupid. I have been unkind,
unreasonable. All to-day--... I've been thinking about it. Dear! I
don't care for anything--It's _you_. If I have you nothing else
matters ... Only I get hurried and cross. It's the work and being
poor. Dear one, we _must_ hold to each other. All to-day--It's been
dreadful...."

He stopped. They sat clinging to one another.

"I do love you," she said presently with her arms about him. "Oh! I
do--_do_--love you."

He drew her closer to him.

He kissed her neck. She pressed him to her.

Their lips met.

The expiring candle streamed up into a tall flame, flickered, and was
suddenly extinguished. The air was heavy with the scent of roses.

CHAPTER XXX.

A WITHDRAWAL.

On Tuesday Lewisham returned from Vigours' at five--at half-past six
he would go on to his science class at Walham Green--and discovered
Mrs. Chaffery and Ethel in tears. He was fagged and rather anxious for
some tea, but the news they had for him drove tea out of his head
altogether.

"He's gone," said Ethel.

"Who's gone? What! Not Chaffery?"

Mrs. Chaffery, with a keen eye to Lewisham's behaviour, nodded
tearfully over an experienced handkerchief.

Lewisham grasped the essentials of the situation forthwith, and
trembled on the brink of an expletive. Ethel handed him a letter.

For a moment Lewisham held this in his hand asking;
questions. Mrs. Chaffery had come upon it in the case of her eight-day
clock when the time to wind it came round. Chaffery, it seemed, had
not been home since Saturday night. The letter was an open one
addressed to Lewisham, a long rambling would-be clever letter, oddly
inferior in style to Chaffery's conversation. It had been written some
hours before Chaffery's last visit his talk then had been perhaps a
sort of codicil.

"The inordinate stupidity of that man Lagune is driving me out of the
country," Lewisham saw. "It has been at last a definite stumbling
block--even a legal stumbling block. I fear. I am off. I skedaddle. I
break ties. I shall miss our long refreshing chats--you had found me
out and I could open my mind. I am sorry to part from Ethel also, but
thank Heaven she has you to look to! And indeed they both have you to
look to, though the 'both'