taken all that on trust?" he continued. "If I were to die,
suppose--death is a great deed that even the smallest of us are able
to accomplish--Berthe!" He turned to the attendant who was
waiting--"Consomme--Omelette aux fines herbes--et poulet roti aux
cressons."

"Oui, monsieur--Consomme--pour deux, monsieur?"

"The whole lot pour deux."

Berthe laughed with her little cooing sound in the throat.

"Omelette aux fines herbes, et poulet roti aux cresson--oui,
monsieur."

She departed and they listened to the repetition of it all--

"Deux consommes--deux--" as she shouted it through the little
doorway to the kitchen.

"Supposing I were to die," Traill repeated. He leant his elbows on
the table and gazed steadily into her eyes.

"Why should you talk like that?" she pleaded, and all the while
through her brain scampered the questions--"Does he mean if he were
to die? Doesn't he mean if he were to leave me?" They danced a mad
dance behind her eyes. Had he looked deep enough, he might have seen
their capers.

"Because that sort of thing has to be talked," he said gently. "You
haven't the faintest idea whether I've made any provision for you
or not. I've often wondered would you ask, but you've never said a
word. Aren't you rather foolish? Do you think you take enough care
for yourself? Do you think you look far enough into the future? Don't
you think you treat life too much in the same way as you did my offer
of the umbrella on the top of the Hammersmith 'bus?"

Many another woman would have had it out then; flung the questions
at him, preferring knowledge rather than torture of mind. To Sally
this was impossible. Again she showed those same characteristics of
her father. She hoped against almost all absence of promise; she had
faith in the face of the blackest doubt. He had said--if he
died--perhaps he meant that. Yet the kissing of his sister lifted
like the shadow in a dream before her eyes. She knew he had been with
Mrs. Durlacher that afternoon. Could she have won him still further?
Sally knew her own impotence--bowed under it, recognized fully how
powerless she was to hold him if once the links in the chain of their
caring began to lose their grip. And now, he was offering to make
provision for her. Inevitably that seemed to be the beginning of the
end. Before, she was his, with that emotional phrase in her mind--as
God had made them. Now she was to become his, because he had bought
her, paid for her. Ther