again, and
looked up to the great window of the studio that was now illumined with
a warm light, though everywhere else the house was dark. She saw a
shadow flit across the blind, and then another shadow. They were there
together.

How they would stare if she boldly used her key and intruded upon them!
How they would tremble if they knew she was there, straining for a
glimpse of their shadows!

But she had no impulse now to disturb them. The game had been played,
and she had been thrown out.

With a sigh she moved away, turning her painful steps up the street,
more instinctively than consciously. She walked and walked mechanically,
retracing the route she had taken on her way there. The rain descended
in thin, sharp lines, but she took no heed. But suddenly an arm was
thrust through hers, and she looked round with a terrible start. A burly
flush-faced man with a ruffled silk hat was holding an umbrella over
her, was speaking to her. Her eye noticed irrelevantly they were just by
a closed dark public-house whose nickel reflectors caught the light from
an adjoining street-lamp.

"Hadn't you better take me home with you, my dear?"

For a second she stared at him, then, with a hoarse cry, she shook
herself free, and with a supreme effort rushed off like a frightened
fawn. As she turned into another street she overtook a hansom going at a
snail's pace.

"Where to?" asked the man through the roof, after she had got in.

"Straight home as fast as you can," was her strange answer.

The man looked down upon her. "Where's that?" he asked good-humouredly.

"I beg your pardon," she exclaimed, vainly attempting to control her
breath. She gave him the address, and off they went.

At the end of the journey she paid him profusely, and he thanked her
with as profuse a civility. She let herself in with her key, went up at
once to her room, and threw herself across her bed. Her sobs broke out
afresh. "Darling," she called; "I want you back again to be mine, and
mine only."

XXV

Lady Betty did not let go the hand which she had clutched in terror, and
her companion responded with a touch of caressing reassurance.

"My heart is still beating," she said, as they turned off the river bank
into Tite Street. "Suppose we had crushed that poor creature. What a
terrible memory it would have left with us!"

"Happily she wasn't in the least hurt," he replied. "She must have been
in a fit of abstraction."

"I caught sight