hich clasped his.

"I have kept this to the last," Beatrice said, in a low tone. "Elizabeth
is in London."

He was curiously unmoved.

"Yes?" he murmured.

"I should like you--I think it would be well for you to go and see her,"
she went on. "You know, Leonard, you were such a strange person in those
days. You may imagine things. You may not realize where you are. I think
that you ought to go and see her now, now that you have lived through
some suffering, now that you understand things better. Will you?"

"Yes, I will go," Tavernake promised.

Beatrice glanced round towards where her father was standing.

"I don't want him to know," she whispered. "I don't want either him
or myself to be tempted to take any of her money. She is living at
Claridge's Hotel. Go there and see her before you leave for your new
life."

He stood at the door and watched them go down the Strand, the professor,
flamboyant, walking erect with flying coat-tails, and his big cigar held
firmly between his teeth; Beatrice, a wan figure in her black clothes,
clinging to his arm. Tavernake watched them until they disappeared,
conscious of a curious excitement, a strange pain, a sense of
revelation. When at last they were out of sight and he turned back for
his coat and hat, his feet were suddenly leaden. The band was playing
the last selection--it was the air which Beatrice had sung only that
night at the east-end music-hall. With a sudden overpowering impulse
he turned and strode down the Strand in the direction where they had
vanished. It was too late. There was no sign of them.

CHAPTER VI. UNDERSTANDING COMES TOO LATE

Tavernake's first impression of Elizabeth was that he had never, even
in his wildest thoughts, done her justice. He had never imagined her so
wonderfully, so alluringly beautiful. She had received him, after a very
long delay, in her sitting-room at Claridge's Hotel--a large apartment
furnished more like a drawing-room. She was standing, when he entered,
almost in the center of the room, dressed in a long lace cloak and a hat
with a drooping black feather. She looked at him, as the door opened, as
though for a moment half puzzled. Then she laughed softly and held out
her hands.

"Why, of course I remember you!" she exclaimed. "And to think that when
I had your card I couldn't imagine where I had heard the name before!
You are my dear estate agent's clerk, who wouldn't take my money, and
who was so wretchedly rud