refuge from every uncertainty. She met them now, but only,
as she felt, in transit; they included her parenthetically in a larger
flight. She followed the flight, and it carried her to a corner to which
Una had withdrawn--one of the palmy nooks to which Mrs. Van Sideren
attributed the success of her Saturdays. Westall, a moment later, had
overtaken his look, and found a place at the girl's side. She bent
forward, speaking eagerly; he leaned back, listening, with the
depreciatory smile which acted as a filter to flattery, enabling him
to swallow the strongest doses without apparent grossness of appetite.
Julia winced at her own definition of the smile.

On the way home, in the deserted winter dusk, Westall surprised his wife
by a sudden boyish pressure of her arm. "Did I open their eyes a bit?
Did I tell them what you wanted me to?" he asked gaily.

Almost unconsciously, she let her arm slip from his. "What I wanted--?"

"Why, haven't you--all this time?" She caught the honest wonder of his
tone. "I somehow fancied you'd rather blamed me for not talking more
openly--before-- You've made me feel, at times, that I was sacrificing
principles to expediency."

She paused a moment over her reply; then she asked quietly: "What made
you decide not to--any longer?"

She felt again the vibration of a faint surprise. "Why--the wish to
please you!" he answered, almost too simply.

"I wish you would not go on, then," she said abruptly.

He stopped in his quick walk, and she felt his stare through the
darkness.

"Not go on--?"

"Call a hansom, please. I'm tired," broke from her with a sudden rush of
physical weariness.

Instantly his solicitude enveloped her. The room had been infernally
hot--and then that confounded cigarette smoke--he had noticed once or
twice that she looked pale--she mustn't come to another Saturday. She
felt herself yielding, as she always did, to the warm influence of his
concern for her, the feminine in her leaning on the man in him with a
conscious intensity of abandonment. He put her in the hansom, and her
hand stole into his in the darkness. A tear or two rose, and she let
them fall. It was so delicious to cry over imaginary troubles!

That evening, after dinner, he surprised her by reverting to the subject
of his talk. He combined a man's dislike of uncomfortable questions
with an almost feminine skill in eluding them; and she knew that if he
returned to the subject he must have some special