s standing
beside him with the bill. She reached out her hand and took it. The
usual few mistakes had occurred. She explained them, good temperedly,
and the waiter, with profuse apologies, went back to have it corrected.

He turned to her as the man went. "Try and forgive me," he said in a low
voice. "It all came tumbling out before I thought what I was saying."

The blood was flowing back into her veins. "Oh, it wasn't your fault,"
she answered. "We must make the best we can of it."

He bent forward so that he could see into her eyes.

"Tell me," he said. There was a note of fierce exultation in his voice.
"I'll promise never to speak of it again. If I had been a free man,
could I have won you?"

She had risen while he was speaking. She moved to him and laid her hands
upon his shoulders.

"Will you serve me and fight for me against all my enemies?" she asked.

"So long as I live," he answered.

She glanced round. There was no sign of the returning waiter. She bent
over him and kissed him.

"Don't come with me," she said. "There's a cab stand in the Avenue. I
shall walk to Sevres and take the train."

She did not look back.

CHAPTER XII

She reached home in the evening. The Phillips's old rooms had been twice
let since Christmas, but were now again empty. The McKean with his
silent ways and his everlasting pipe had gone to America to superintend
the production of one of his plays. The house gave her the feeling of
being haunted. She had her dinner brought up to her and prepared for a
long evening's work; but found herself unable to think--except on the one
subject that she wanted to put off thinking about. To her relief the
last post brought her a letter from Arthur. He had been called to Lisbon
to look after a contract, and would be away for a fortnight. Her father
was not as well as he had been.

It seemed to just fit in. She would run down and spend a few quiet days
at Liverpool. In her old familiar room where the moon peeped in over the
tops of the tall pines she would be able to reason things out. Perhaps
her father would be able to help her. She had lost her childish
conception of him as of someone prim and proper, with cut and dried
formulas for all occasions. That glimpse he had shown her of himself had
established a fellowship between them. He, too, had wrestled with life's
riddles, not sure of his own answers. She found him suffering from his
old heart troubl