-at
a later date she had done that. Gathering as little as she did, the
woman who listened was still strangely fascinated to curiosity.

Then at last a whole sentence reached her ears in a sudden hush of
sound.

The man took his elbows from the table, as if the climax of the story
had been reached.

"I know!" he said excitedly; "I know--the type of woman who never
breaks a commandment because she daren't, yet never earns a beatitude
because she can't; but, my God, if this isn't true--"

Then the other began his reply--

"My dear fellow--should I come and--"

She heard no more. A renewed deafening clatter of plates from the
grill drowned the remainder of his sentence.

"There's a little tragedy behind us," said the woman, leaning forward,
speaking under her breath to one of her companions. They all turned
and gazed in the direction of the table. Then the two men stood up.
One of them picked up the bill.

"Pay at the desk, please, sir," said the waiter obsequiously.

He half followed them down the room. They had forgotten to tip him.
It was quite obvious that they forgot. Yet his face was a study in
the mingling of disappointment and contempt. He stood there looking
after them; then he chucked up his head in disgust, and catching the
eye of some distant waiter, he made a sign of a nought with his fingers,
and looked up at the ceiling.

As they passed the woman's table, she heard one of them say--

"There's not a straight woman in the whole of that damned set--not
one!" Then they passed out of hearing.

"I think it's a marvellous thing," said the woman when they had gone,
"to think of the thousands of exciting tragedies, romances, crimes
perhaps, that are being acted out to their ends all round one, and
except for a stray little bit of conversation like that, one would
never realize it. I remember hearing a woman in a crowd say something
to a man in the most awful voice, full of horror, that I've ever heard.
I just caught her saying, 'If he finds it out to-night, either I'll
kill myself or he'll do it for me,' and then they got out of the crowd,
called a hansom and drove away. Positively, I didn't sleep that night,
wondering if he had found it out, wondering if he had killed her,
wondering if hundreds of other people had found out hundreds of other
horrible things. But it all went in the morning. Cissy had a terrible
toothache, and I had to take her to the dentist's."

CHAPTER VII

It was nine o'