fford it, you'll go in for fiction. But just now, all
your ideas are chaotic, and you won't do a decent story until you've
sorted them out and fallen in love."

Jimmy coloured. "How do you know I've never done that yet?"

The other man shook his head. "You're too sweetly young in many of your
ways and ideas. Oh, I daresay there's some prim maiden belonging to
your sister's circle, with an aldermanic papa in the City--but you,
yourself, would never really be in love with her. I know you too well;
and if you did marry her, you would never write a book, until you had
run away from her, as you would certainly do. Well," he got up abruptly,
as if to avoid giving any reasons for his ideas, "I'm going over to the
_Record_ office now, and if you come, I'll introduce you to the cashier
and you can get your cheque."

Jimmy did not waste any time after he left the _Record_ office. The
cashier himself changed the cheque for him, the banks being shut. Jimmy
hesitated a moment as to whether he should take a hansom, then
remembered the lean days of the past, and jumped on an omnibus. Lalage
could make a shilling go a surprisingly long way.

He found the girl sitting in the dark, in front of an almost dead fire,
and his conscience smote him on account of the time he had spent in the
warm, comfortable club smoking-room.

"We're in luck, sweetheart," he said, putting his hands on her
shoulders, and kissing her. "I've got the six guineas out of the
_Record_."

She reached up and pulled his face down to hers again, in one of her
rare bursts of outward affection. "Oh, I'm so glad. I was reckoning up,
and I found you must have gone out without any money, even for tobacco
or a drink, and I was picturing you trudging back in this cold drizzle.
You are a naughty boy to do those things."

"And how about you, if I spent all the money? Wouldn't you think to
yourself that I was a selfish beast?"

Lalage shook her head. "You could never be selfish; it's not your
nature. You might be thoughtless, that's all. Promise me you won't go
out like that again. I shall worry ever so much if you don't. I know,
only too well, what it means to trudge about in the London mud without a
penny for even a glass of hot milk. Oh, the cold." She gave a little
shiver. "You know that shop in Regent Street, where they have the big
fires in the window, showing off some stoves. I've stood there for as
long as I dare, more than once, trying to think I was feeling the