you would."

"How?"

"By being kind, by taking me back to favour, and forgiving me."

"It looks as if I had done that already."

"But only in a hesitating, half-hearted manner."

"It is far easier for me to forgive," says Eleanor, "than for you to
accept my forgiveness and not err again."

There is silence between them for some moments.

"If I could think you cared for me just a little, Eleanor, I would be a
better man."

"No," she said, biting her lips, and struggling with intense emotion;
"you must reform without my aid--it will be harder, and therefore
nobler. I do not 'care' for you."

He sees the efforts these words are costing her.

"I don't believe that, Eleanor."

"Then in disbelieving me you put me on a par with a common liar," she
says hotly.

"Oh, no," he replies with his wan smile; "it is one of 'the social lies
that warp us from the living truth.'"

They are turning into the Savoy courtyard.

Eleanor alights half pleased, half frightened at her daring.

She feels very strange as she enters the huge restaurant with Carol.

It is a full day, and he points her out several celebrities as they
pass to their table.

"This is the one, sir," says the waiter, "for two," removing an engaged
card on Eleanor's plate.

"How was the table reserved for us?" she asks Mr. Quinton. "We seemed
expected."

"I wired for it this morning," he answered tenderly. "I knew you would
be in town, and I meant you to come!"

"It is very wrong of me," she sighs, and her eyes glisten as if washed
by still rains under her lashes. "Do you know, I have a calendar in my
room, and every morning I pull off a leaf to read the motto. I have
just remembered the quotation for to-day."

"What was it?" he asks.

Eleanor bends her head over her _hors d'oeuvre_.

"The stately flower of female fortitude--of perfect wifehood."

"Ah!" he sighs, "Tennyson."

"Yes," says Mrs. Roche.

Her eyes glance round the room.

How many bright eyes glisten over their champagne, and merry tongues
joke and laugh away the hours!

"I like to look at people and make histories of them," says Eleanor.

"That girl with the flaxen hair, next to the dark man on your right,
was a ballet girl before she married Sir Frederick Thurston. Everybody
prophesied that her high kick would lift her into the aristocracy when
she first gained favour. Her name was Poppy Poppleton, and people
think she poisoned her husband and let another woman swin