here are other things to reckon with." She looked coldly beyond him
out of the window. "A man's intelligence when he is in love--how far can
one count on it?"

There was nothing but silence for that, or perhaps the murmured, "Oh, I
don't agree," with which Lindsay met it. He rode down her logic with a
simple appeal. "Then after all," he said, "you're not my friend."

It goaded her into something like an impertinence. "After you have
married her," she said, "you'll see."

"You will be hers then," he declared.

"I will be yours." Her eyes leaped along the prospect and rested on a
brass-studded Tartar shield at the other end of the room.

"And I thought you broad in these views," Lindsay said, glancing at her
curiously. Her opportunity for defence was curtailed by a heavy step in
the hall, and the lifted portiere disclosed Surgeon Major Livingstone,
looking warm. He, whose other name was the soul of hospitality, made a
profound and feeling remonstrance against Lindsay's going before tiffin,
though Alicia, doing something to a bowl of nasturtiums, did not hear
it. Not that her added protest would have detained Lindsay, who took his
perturbation away with him as quickly as might be. Alicia saw the cloud
upon him as he shook hands with her, and found it but slightly consoling
to reflect that his sun would without doubt re-emerge in all effulgence
on the other side of the door.

CHAPTER IX

That same Sunday, Alicia had been able to say to Lindsay about Hilda
Howe, "We have not stood still--we know each other well now," and when
he commented with some reserve upon this to follow it up. "But these
things have so little to do with mere length of time or number of
opportunities," she declared. "One springs at some people."

A Major-General, interrupting, said he wished he had the chance; and
they talked about something else. But perhaps this is enough to explain
a note which went by messenger from the Livingstones' pillared palace in
Middleton Street to Number Three, Lal Behari's Lane, on Monday morning.
It was a short note, making a definite demand with an absence of
colour and softness and emotion which was almost elaborate. Hilda, at
breakfast, tore off the blank half sheet, and wrote in pencil--

"I think I can arrange to get her here about five this afternoon. No
rehearsal--they're doing something to the gas-pipes at the theatre, so
you will find me, anyway. And I'll be delighted to see you."

She twisted it