s," he answered abruptly, "I--I've had a bad let-down."

"Financial?"

"No."

"Oh! Really!" she said pettishly.

"It doesn't matter," he remarked, rousing himself, "the thing is to
make the best of life, and by Jove! I'm going to!"

"So you come and look for me?"

"Precisely," said Osborn. "You've been awf'ly decent to me, Roselle.
Knowing you has meant a lot to me. I don't believe you'd let a fellow
down very badly, would you?" He began to feel tender towards her, and
the stupidity and avarice, which he had awhile ago begun faintly to
see in her, now receded under the spell of the lights and the hour.
"If no one else has cut in since I last saw you," he said, leaning
towards her, "you might be kind to me again. Will you? I'm lonely. I'm
simply too dreadfully lonely for anything. What are you doing this
week-end?"

"Nothing," she said after a careful pause.

"Come out into the country on Saturday."

"I've a matinee."

"Of course. Sunday then? I'd bring the car round for you early, and
we'd have a jolly day, get down to the sea somewhere. You'd like
Brighton?"

"That's a nice run," she agreed. "Yes!"

"We could get back for dinner. Where shall we dine--Pagani's?"

She suggested, also, a supper club to which she belonged. "You'll have
to belong, too," she said with enthusiasm. "It's the brightest thing
in town. Will you, if I get someone to propose you?"

"Rather!"

He had felt dreadfully at a loose end before that evening, but now,
this old intimacy again established, he was, in a restless sort of
way, happier. As they drove home, she slid her hand into his pocket
like a cunning child and said: "Osborn, I want a fiver awf'ly badly;
lend me one." And it was pleasure to him to pull out a handful of
money and let her pick out the gold.

"I'll pay you back quite soon," she said, lying; and he replied: "You
know you won't, you naughty girl; and you know I don't want you to,
either."

She kissed him good night with the facility of her type, in the
taxicab as they crossed a dark corner.

"Less lonely now?" she queried.

"I don't care who denies it," said Osborn, "a man's got to have a
woman in his life; he's just got to. If one drives him...."

"Poor boy!" she said in her murmurous way.

He left her at her door and kept the cab to drive him to the nearest
Tube station. A strange excitement filled him as he looked ahead to
the direction in which he was drifting. What did it matter, anyway? He
was al