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FIVE.

She dropped into a chair by the piano, and rested her elbows on the
curved lid of the piano.

"You're frightfully cruel!" she sobbed, hiding her face.

He fidgeted away to the larger of the two windows, which was bayed, so
that the room could boast a view of the sea. On the floor he noticed an
open book, pages downwards. He picked it up. It was the poems of
Crashaw, an author he had never read but had always been intending to
read. Outside, the driver of his cab was bunching up his head and
shoulders together under a large umbrella, upon which the rain
spattered. The flanks of the resigned horse glistened with rain.

"You needn't talk about cruelty!" he remarked, staring hard at the
signboard of an optician opposite. He could hear the faint clanging of
church bells.

After a pause she said, as if apologetically--

"Keeping a boarding-house isn't my line. But what could I do? My
sister-in-law had it, and I was with her. And when she died...
Besides, I dare say I can keep a boarding-house as well as plenty of
other people. But--well, it's no use going into that!"

Edwin abruptly sat down near her.

"Come, now," he said less harshly, more persuasively. "How much do you
owe?"

"Oh!" she cried, pouting, and shifting her feet. "It's out of the
question! They've distrained for seventy-five pounds."

"I don't care if they've distrained for seven hundred and seventy-five
pounds!" She seemed just like a girl to him again now, in spite of her
face and her figure. "If that was cleared off, you could carry on,
couldn't you? This is just the season. Could you get a servant in, in
time for these three sisters?"

"I could get a charwoman, anyhow," she said unwillingly.

"Well, do you owe anything else?"

"There'll be the expenses."

"Of the distraint?"

"Yes."

"That's nothing. I shall lend you a hundred pounds. It just happens
that I've got fifty pounds on me in notes. That and a cheque'll settle
the bailiff person, and the rest of the hundred I'll send you by post.
It'll be a bit of working capital."

She rose and threaded between chairs and tables to the sofa, several
feet from Edwin. With a vanquished and weary sigh, she threw herself on
to the sofa.

"I never knew there was anybody like you in the world," she breathed,
flicking away some fluff from her breast. She seemed to be regarding
him, not as a benefa