oment, he stopped her recital by
getting up to pace the room. In her own house--her own house! And--after
that, she had gone on with him! He came back to his chair and did not
interrupt again, but his stillness almost frightened her.

Coming to the incidents of the day itself, she hesitated. Must she
tell him, too, of Rosek--was it wise, or necessary? The all-or-nothing
candour that was part of her nature prevailed, and she went straight on,
and, save for the feverish jerking of his evening shoe, Winton made no
sign. When she had finished, he got up and slowly extinguished the end
of his cigar against the window-sill; then looking at her lying back in
her chair as if exhausted, he said: "By God!" and turned his face away
to the window.

At that hour before the theatres rose, a lull brooded in the London
streets; in this quiet narrow one, the town's hum was only broken by the
clack of a half-drunken woman bickering at her man as they lurched along
for home, and the strains of a street musician's fiddle, trying to make
up for a blank day. The sound vaguely irritated Winton, reminding him of
those two damnable foreigners by whom she had been so treated. To have
them at the point of a sword or pistol--to teach them a lesson! He heard
her say:

"Dad, I should like to pay his debts. Then things would be as they were
when I married him."

He emitted an exasperated sound. He did not believe in heaping coals of
fire.

"I want to make sure, too, that the girl is all right till she's over
her trouble. Perhaps I could use some of that--that other money, if mine
is all tied up?"

It was sheer anger, not disapproval of her impulse, that made him
hesitate; money and revenge would never be associated in his mind. Gyp
went on:

"I want to feel as if I'd never let him marry me. Perhaps his debts are
all part of that--who knows? Please!"

Winton looked at her. How like--when she said that "Please!" How
like--her figure sunk back in the old chair, and the face lifted in
shadow! A sort of exultation came to him. He had got her back--had got
her back!

XVIII

Fiorsen's bedroom was--as the maid would remark--"a proper
pigsty"--until he was out of it and it could be renovated each day.
He had a talent for disorder, so that the room looked as if three men
instead of one had gone to bed in it. Clothes and shoes, brushes,
water, tumblers, breakfast-tray, newspapers, French novels, and
cigarette-ends--none were ever where they s