mile, the sound of his voice, sent a shudder through
her.

"I'm not going to leave you here alone."

But Miltoun's grasp tightened on her wrists.

"My dear Babs, you will do what I tell you. Go home, hold your tongue,
and leave me to burn out in peace."

Barbara sustained that painful grip without wincing; she had regained
her calmness.

"You must come! You haven't anything here, not even a cool drink."

"My God! Barley water!"

The scorn he put into those two words was more withering than a whole
philippic against redemption by creature comforts. And feeling it dart
into her, Barbara closed her lips tight. He had dropped her wrists, and
again, begun pacing up and down; suddenly he stopped:

"'The stars, sun, moon all shrink away,
A desert vast, without a bound,
And nothing left to eat or drink,

"And a dark desert all around.'

"You should read your Blake, Audrey."

Barbara turned quickly, and went out frightened. She passed through the
sitting-room and corridor on to the staircase. He was ill-raving! The
fever in Miltoun's veins seemed to have stolen through the clutch of his
hands into her own veins. Her face was burning, she thought confusedly,
breathed unevenly. She felt sore, and at the same time terribly sorry;
and withal there kept rising in her the gusty memory of Harbingers kiss.

She hurried down the stairs, turned by instinct down-hill and found
herself on the Embankment. And suddenly, with her inherent power of
swift decision, she hailed a cab, and drove to the nearest telephone
office.

CHAPTER VIII

To a woman like Audrey Noel, born to be the counterpart and complement
of another,--whose occupations and effort were inherently divorced
from the continuity of any stiff and strenuous purpose of her own, the
uprooting she had voluntarily undergone was a serious matter.

Bereaved of the faces of her flowers, the friendly sighing of her
lime-tree, the wants of her cottagers; bereaved of that busy monotony of
little home things which is the stay and solace of lonely women, she was
extraordinarily lost. Even music for review seemed to have failed her.
She had never lived in London, so that she had not the refuge of old
haunts and habits, but had to make her own--and to make habits and
haunts required a heart that could at least stretch out feelers and lay
hold of things, and her heart was not now able. When she had struggled
with her Edward