if you
were out of your mind! If I did have a child, I should want to see
it. I shouldn't want to be ashamed of it; I shouldn't want to disown
it, as you'd have me do."

"Well, then, you might see it as often as you wished."

He strode to the door. She must have it now. He had meant to say
nothing, wishing to save her feelings; but she must have it now.

"Then I'm engaged to be married," he said firmly. "Do you see now
that it's impossible?"

She dropped into a chair, staring strangely at his face.

"You--married?" she whispered.

"Yes; and I've no desire to have things cropping up in my life
afterwards, just in the way that this Mrs. Priestly in the divorce
courts--"

Sally struggled to her feet.

"Mrs. Priestly?"

"Yes; what about her? Do you know her?"

"What do you know about her?" she asked.

"I'm counsel for her husband."

"You're cross-examining her?"

Straight through her mind leapt that scene in the divorce court when
she had witnessed his attack upon the miserable woman whom the law
had placed out for his feet to trample on.

"Yes," he replied. "What _do_ you know about her?"

She sank back into her chair saying nothing.

"You won't say?"

She shook her head.

"Well, it's of not much interest to me. I shouldn't have you
subpoenaed, if you did know anything. You know the case, at any rate.
Well, I don't want that sort of affair in my life; so you never need
mention this matter again. I'll come and see you sometimes, if you
want me to; but only on condition that we have none of this. When
I'm married, of course, then it'll have to stop."

Sally raised her head. Her eyes were burning--her lips were drawn
to a thin colourless line.

"You--who never were going to marry!" she shouted. "You who didn't
believe in it--who wouldn't fetter yourself with it! Oh, go! Go!"

CHAPTER VI

That same evening there might have been seen two men seated opposite
to each other at a small table in the corner of the grill-room of
a well-known restaurant. Throughout the beginning of the meal, they
laughed and talked amiably to each other. No one took particular
notice of them. The waiter, attendant upon their table, leant against
a marble pillar some little distance away and surreptitiously
cleaned his nails with the corner of a menu-card. A band played on
a raised platform in some other part of the room. From where they
sat, they could see the conductor leading his orchestra with the
swaying of