r quickly and
skilfully. Afterward, Ena buttonholed me and sat me down on a hard
settee in a beastly furnished room like a rathskeller, with price tags
on everything, and made me solemnly swear not to split to Rolls."

"About your meeting Miss Child?"

"_Ra-ther!_ And all the rest of it."

"What rest?"

"A lot of rubbish. I don't know what she was driving at, I'm hanged if
I do. But if I didn't like Rolls, I'd suspect."

"But you do like him. And so do I."

"I've noticed that. So would Mubs, if she ever noticed anything that
didn't wave suffragette colours."

"And I shall go on liking him--'right straight on,' as he'd say
himself. Nothing that Ena or anybody else could tell me would make me
believe a word against him. And the girl's nice, too. I'm sure she is.
But how too endlessly quaint she should be in the shop."

"She intimated politely, when we asked her questions, that it was a
last resort."

"I should think so, indeed! She was--well, not a beauty exactly, but
too weirdly fascinating."

"She hasn't changed. Only she looked scared at the sight of us. And
she's thinner in the face. Her eyes seemed to have grown too big for
it. Ena said Petro mustn't find out where she is. Rather rum--what?"

"Is this the thing that's made you so grumpy ever since?"

"I don't know that I've been grumpy. Only a bit reflective. The fact
is---"

"What?"

"Never mind. It wouldn't sound very nice."

"Who cares how it sounds? You might tell me, now we've got so far."

"Well, then, sometimes I wonder whether--the game's worth the candle.
Whatever the rotten old proverb means!"

Eileen had no difficulty in understanding the allusion.

"She's got heaps of good things about her," the girl reminded him,
being as loyal as was humanly possible to her hostess.

"Heaps. They're simply piled up in the corners of her nature. But I
seemed to have wandered into an empty place to-day. By Jove, Eily, I
thought I'd made up my mind. I'm fond of the old place at home, and
I'd like, to see it done up properly. It isn't as if I'd ever care
tuppence again about any girl on earth after--Kathleen. So what does
anything of that sort matter? At least that's what I've been asking
myself."

"I'm afraid Ena thinks you'll soon be asking _her_."

"Heavens! I suppose she does. Not that I've said a confounded word.
I'm hanged if I know what to do! I tell you what. I'll wait and see
how things go to-night. And then--maybe I'll toss up a penny."