ou... You don't seem very sorry I am going, Richard!"

"Oh no--perhaps not."

"I like you much for how you have behaved. It is a curious thing
that directly I have begun to regard you as not my husband, but as
my old teacher, I like you. I won't be so affected as to say I love
you, because you know I don't, except as a friend. But you do seem
that to me!"

Sue was for a few moments a little tearful at these reflections, and
then the station omnibus came round to take her up. Phillotson saw
her things put on the top, handed her in, and was obliged to make an
appearance of kissing her as he wished her good-bye, which she quite
understood and imitated. From the cheerful manner in which they
parted the omnibus-man had no other idea than that she was going for
a short visit.

When Phillotson got back into the house he went upstairs and opened
the window in the direction the omnibus had taken. Soon the noise of
its wheels died away. He came down then, his face compressed like
that of one bearing pain; he put on his hat and went out, following
by the same route for nearly a mile. Suddenly turning round he came
home.

He had no sooner entered than the voice of his friend Gillingham
greeted him from the front room.

"I could make nobody hear; so finding your door open I walked in, and
made myself comfortable. I said I would call, you remember."

"Yes. I am much obliged to you, Gillingham, particularly for coming
to-night."

"How is Mrs.--"

"She is quite well. She is gone--just gone. That's her tea-cup,
that she drank out of only an hour ago. And that's the plate
she--" Phillotson's throat got choked up, and he could not go on.
He turned and pushed the tea-things aside.

"Have you had any tea, by the by?" he asked presently in a renewed
voice.

"No--yes--never mind," said Gillingham, preoccupied. "Gone, you say
she is?"

"Yes... I would have died for her; but I wouldn't be cruel to her
in the name of the law. She is, as I understand, gone to join her
lover. What they are going to do I cannot say. Whatever it may be
she has my full consent to."

There was a stability, a ballast, in Phillotson's pronouncement which
restrained his friend's comment. "Shall I--leave you?" he asked.

"No, no. It is a mercy to me that you have come. I have some
articles to arrange and clear away. Would you help me?"

Gillingham assented; and having gone to the upper rooms the
schoolmaster opened drawers, an