Rodd's flesh
creep. She seemed to him a symbol of all the evil in the world, decay,
disruption, corruption, and with a flash of inspiration he discerned in
her the source of all this pitiful tangle of lies. A tender sympathy
entirely new to him took possession of his faculties and armed with
this he determined that he would not fail in whatever part he was
called upon to play in the drama of Clara's life.

He said to the old woman,--

'We have been talking it over. We have decided to book you a passage
to Canada and to give you a hundred pounds with which to keep yourself
alive until you find work to do.'

'What?' she said, 'me leave London? Dear old London, dear old
Leicester Square and the theatres? And leave you to do what you like
with my daughter, you dirty dog? I've seen her nosing round on the
stairs after you, a feller that lives on bread-and-cheese and
grape-nuts. I know your sort, you dirty, interfering blackguard.
You've never given a girl as much as a drink in your life.'

'All the same,' said Rodd, 'your passage will be booked, and if Mr
Claude What's-his-name shows his face here there'll be a neck broken on
the stairs.'

He walked out and heard the old woman gulp down a glass of port and
say,--

'Well, I'm damned!'

Then, as he moved upstairs to his own room he heard her screaming,--

'Kitty, you filthy little claw-hammer----'

The door was slammed to, and he heard only their voices in bitter
argument, tears, reproaches, curses; but at last, as he paced to and
fro in his lonely room, the tumult died down and he could wrestle with
the new turbulent thoughts awakened in him.... Work was out of the
question. He had been clawed back into life. If he did not want to be
destroyed he must be profoundly, passionately, and scrupulously honest
with himself. He must face his emotions as he had never done.

At first he thought of wildly heroic solutions. He would seize his
opportunity with Kitty, take advantage of her soft gratitude and sweep
her out of harm's way..... But what was the good of that? It settled
nothing, solved nothing. To act without Clara's knowledge would be to
betray her. That he was sure was what Verschoyle had done.

Already he had interfered and there was no knowing what Claude's spite
might lead to.... O God, what a tangle! What should be done, what
could be done, for Clara? No one mattered but she. Mann, Verschoyle,
himself, what did any of them matter? She w