ge Nicky's tandem bore
him swiftly down the road towards where the telegraph wires told of the
way which led to Miss Polly Behenna.

Ishmael watched as long as the cart was in sight, taking pride and
comfort in the fact that his eyes could see the minutest detail as far
as the turn on to the high-road; then he came back into the room, and
with a smile and a sigh took up the accounts. Some absurd little thing
within him made him determine that he would not take to spectacles till
Nicky had gone to Canada and could not remark on them.

CHAPTER II

AUTUMN

A few evenings later Ishmael went out alone on to the moors, filled with
very different ideas from any that had held him of late. Not the petty
friction of domesticity, nor the pervading thought of that queer feeling
in his eyes, nor care for Nicky's future, or anything of the present,
stirred within him. A letter received by Georgie that day, and the
thought and realisation of which Ishmael had carried about with him
through all his varied work, now swamped his mind in memories so vivid
that the present was only in his mind as a faint bitter flavour hardly
to be noticed.

Judy had written to Georgie, had written to say she was coming down some
time soon, but primarily the letter had been to give news of Killigrew.
Ishmael and Georgie knew--exactly how they could not have told--in what
relationship Judith and Killigrew had stood to each other; Ishmael felt
he had known ever since that evening when he met Judy in Paradise Lane,
and to Georgie the certainty had come with greater knowledge of life and
realisation of herself. They had hardly mentioned the affair to each
other, and then only in a round-about manner, but each guessed at the
other's knowledge. Georgie was aware that for some years now Judith had
seen very little of Killigrew, but how or why the severance had come
about neither she nor Ishmael could guess. Judith had never mentioned
Killigrew to them except as a mutual friend; she always had the strength
of her own sins. Never till this letter had she spoken or written
otherwise, but now she told that Killigrew was very ill in Paris and
that she had gone to him. Very ill was practically all she said, beyond
a mere mention that the illness was typhoid; but Ishmael knew at once
what she meant, though she either would not or could not write it.
Through all Georgie's comments and hopes that soon better news would
come he never doubted, though he said l