iolets and pressed the flowers on his mother, who took them shyly
but coloured with pleasure.

When they were in the street again they walked on silently for a while.
Wyndham saw that Lady Betty had been deeply touched; that something
wonderful had been revealed to her of which, perhaps, she had never
caught a glimpse in her whole existence. Presently she turned to Wyndham
with a quiet smile that was the natural reflection of her thought.

"You do forgive me, dear," she asked, "for my arbitrary disposal of
your Browning, my own present to you!"

"You sacrificed my gift of violets, so we are quits."

"After this we shall scarcely need any memento of the day--who could
ever forget?" Then with a little thrill of joy: "But I've my Pilgrim all
the same." She touched the book lovingly as he held it, and he was aware
of her movement as of a caress. It was his gift to her, and what a world
of affection in this implication of the value she set on it!

XXIII

They found the theatre easily, and, from their snug box, enjoyed a most
lurid melodrama, which amply redeemed the promise of the hoarding, and
was played by a vigorous company who seemed in no wise dismayed by
yawning spaces and a thin scattering of audience. Nay, the thrills were
even more than the adventurers had reckoned on, for pistol shots
suddenly rang out in the third act, and Lady Betty clutched hard at the
curtain of the box. She presently realised, however, that the iniquitous
foreign nobleman with the fur overcoat and large moustachios, whose
veiled hand had directed the remorseless persecution of the good and
righteous, had at last paid for his misdeeds, and with this passing of
the villain Lady Betty found that her sense of poetic justice was
abundantly satisfied; though the luckless heroine, appearing on the
scene just then, and incautiously picking up the fallen pistol, was at
once arrested as the manifest murderess. Then the curtain went down, and
Lady Betty rose.

"We must not stay to the end. Our day is over, and I want to give you
the promised souvenir of our brief friendship."

There was a catch in her voice, and he understood that the sob had been
suppressed with difficulty. He felt it was for him now to be strong; to
set the note of stoic resignation, even as she had led off their
adventures with a mood that had made this day the most wonderful of all
his life.

"Ah, your strange, strange souvenir!" he laughed. "You must admit I have