eet the rector's son in the stables then. I heard that afterwards.
They lived anyhow, and owed money to all the tradespeople round.

"One night I was awakened by a knocking outside; my landlady slept at
the back, and she was deaf besides, so I went down myself. The wind
put my candle out as I opened the door, but I saw a woman standing
there in the rain, and I asked her what she wanted. She made no
answer, but pushed past me into the passage, and went into my
sitting-room. I followed, of course.

"Well, perhaps you have guessed that it was Gertrude. Her yellow hair
hung down and about her face; she was only half dressed, and her bare
arms and shoulders were all wet. Her skirts were torn and stained with
mud. She told me her father had turned her out of the house in a
drunken fury and she had come to me. Even then I wondered why she had
not gone to some woman--surely she might have found shelter--however,
she had come to me. I was going to call up my landlady, but she would
not allow it because she said that no one but I need ever know. She
would creep home through the fields soon after sunrise and her sister
would let her in. The old man would be sleeping heavily.... The end of
it was that I let her go up to my room while I lay on the sofa in the
little parlour. The horsehair bolster was deucedly hard, but I was
young, and when I did get off I slept well. When I woke it was nearer
eight than seven, and I had just scrambled up when my landlady came
in. One look at her face was enough. I understood that Gertrude had
overslept herself too.

"The sequel was hateful. There was a frightful scandal, of course; the
father raved, the women cried, the rector talked to me seriously,
and--Olive, mark this--Gertrude would not say anything. I married her
and we came away."

"It was a trap," cried Olive.

"We had not one single thing in common, and you know when there is no
love sex is a barrier set up by the devil between human souls. After
some years of mutual misery I brought her here. Poor Hilaire has hated
respectable women ever since--she was that, if that counts when there
is nothing else. Just virtue, with no saving graces. She is living in
London now, is much esteemed, and regularly exceeds her allowance."

"Was she pretty?"

Jean had let his pipe go out, and now he relit it. "Oh, yes," he said,
"I suppose so. Frizzy hair and all that. I fancy she has grown stout
now. She is the kind that spreads."

"Life is all so