isn't another book in me. I'm done for, Nicky."

Her tears were hanging now on the curve of her eyelashes. They shook and
fell.

She sat there silent, fronting the abyss. Nicky was horrified and looked
it. If that was how she took it----

"You've overworked yourself. That's all," he said presently.

"Yes. That's all."

She rose. "Nicky," she said, "it's half-past four. If we're going we
must go."

"Are you sure you want to?"

"Of course I want to." She said it in a tone that for Nicky pointed to
another blunder.

"I only thought," said he simply, "it might bore you."

XII

Miss Bickersteth's house was round the corner. So small a house that a
front room and a back room thrown together hardly gave Caro space enough
for tea-parties. But as the back room formed a recess, what space she
had was admirably adapted for the discreet arrangement of conversation
in groups. Its drawback was that persons in the recess remained unaware
of those who entered by the door of the front room, until they were
actually upon them.

Through that door, opened gently by the little servant, Miss
Bickersteth, in the recess, was heard inquiring with some excitement,
"Can't either of you tell me who she is?"

Only Nina and Laura were with her. Jane knew from their abrupt silence,
as she entered, that they had been discussing George Tanqueray's
marriage. She gathered that they had only just begun. There was nothing
for it but to invite them to go on, to behave in all things as if
nothing had happened, or could happen to her.

"Please don't stop," she said, "it sounds exciting."

"It is. But Mr. Nicholson disapproves of scandal," said Caro, not
without address.

"He's been talking nothing else to me," said Jane.

"Yes, but his scandal and our scandal----"

"Yours isn't in it with his. He's seen her."

Three faces turned to Nicholson's, as if it held for them the reflection
of his vision. Miss Bickersteth's face was flushed with embarrassment
that struggled with curiosity; Nina's was almost fierce in its sombre,
haggard intensity; Laura's, in its stillness, had an appealing anxiety,
an innocent distress. It was shadowless and unashamed; it expressed a
trouble that had in it no taint of self.

Nicky met them with an admirable air of light-heartedness. "Don't look
at me," he said. "I can't tell you anything."

"But--you've seen her," said Miss Bickersteth, seating herself at her
tea-table.

"I've seen her, but I don