six-and-twenty,
and wondered why she had not married. A nice stock of ideas she would
have as her dower! If _they_ were to be a part of the modern girl's
trousseau--

Mrs. Westall caught herself up with a start. It was as though some one
else had been speaking--a stranger who had borrowed her own voice: she
felt herself the dupe of some fantastic mental ventriloquism.
Concluding suddenly that the room was stifling and Una's tea too sweet,
she set down her cup, and looked about for Westall: to meet his eyes
had long been her refuge from every uncertainty. She met them now, but
only, as she felt, in transit; they included her parenthetically in a
larger flight. She followed the flight, and it carried her to a corner
to which Una had withdrawn--one of the palmy nooks to which Mrs. Van
Sideren attributed the success of her Saturdays. Westall, a moment
later, had overtaken his look, and found a place at the girl's side.
She bent forward, speaking eagerly; he leaned back, listening, with the
depreciatory smile which acted as a filter to flattery, enabling him to
swallow the strongest doses without apparent grossness of appetite.
Julia winced at her own definition of the smile.

On the way home, in the deserted winter dusk, Westall surprised his
wife by a sudden boyish pressure of her arm. "Did I open their eyes a
bit? Did I tell them what you wanted me to?" he asked gaily.

Almost unconsciously, she let her arm slip from his. "What _I_
wanted--?"

"Why, haven't you--all this time?" She caught the honest wonder of his
tone. "I somehow fancied you'd rather blamed me for not talking more
openly--before--You've made me feel, at times, that I was sacrificing
principles to expediency."

She paused a moment over her reply; then she asked quietly: "What made
you decide not to--any longer?"

She felt again the vibration of a faint surprise. "Why--the wish to
please you!" he answered, almost too simply.

"I wish you would not go on, then," she said abruptly.

He stopped in his quick walk, and she felt his stare through the
darkness.

"Not go on--?"

"Call a hansom, please. I'm tired," broke from her with a sudden rush
of physical weariness.

Instantly his solicitude enveloped her. The room had been infernally
hot--and then that confounded cigarette smoke--he had noticed once or
twice that she looked pale--she mustn't come to another Saturday. She
felt herself yielding, as she always did, to the warm influence of his
con