ded, more or less, a recapitulation of what she had heard,
uncomprehending, in the car.

"And that's how it stands," said I.

I was rather shaken, I must confess, by my narrative, and I turned aside
and lit another cigarette. Liosha remained silent for a while, resting
her cheek on her hand. At last she said in her deep tones:

"Poor little devil! Good God! Poor little devil!"

Tears flooded her eyes.

"By heavens," I cried, "you're a good creature."

"I'm nothing of the sort," said Liosha. She rose. "I guess I must have a
clean up before lunch," and she made for the door.

I looked at my watch. "You just have time," said I.

I opened the door for her to pass out, and fell a-musing in front of the
fire. Here was a new Liosha, as far apart from the serene young
barbarian who had come to us two and a half years before blandly
characterising Euphemia as a damn fool because she would not let her buy
a stocked chicken incubator and take it to the Savoy Hotel, as a prairie
wolf from the noble Great Dane. Her nature had undergone remarkable
developments. As Jaffery had prophesied at Havre, she treated things in
a big way, and she had learned restraint, not the restraint of
convention, for not a convention would have stopped her from doing what
she chose, but the restraint of self-discipline. And she had learned
pity. A year ago she would not have wept over Doria, whom she had every
woman's reason for hating. A new, generous tenderness had blossomed in
her heart. If all the cutthroats of Albania who had murdered her family
had been brought bound and set on their knees with bared necks before
her and she had been presented with a sharp sword, I doubt whether she
would have cut off one single head.

A tap at the window aroused me. It was Jaffery in the rain, which had
just begun to fail, seeking admittance. I let him in.

"This is an awful business, old man," he said gloomily.

From which I gather that for once Barbara's soothing had been of little
avail.

"Have you seen Doria yet?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Barbara is with her. She's coming in to lunch."

At the anti-climax, I smiled. "That shews she's not quite dead yet."

But to Jaffery it was no smiling matter. "Look here, Hilary," he said
hoarsely, "don't you think it would be better for me to cut the whole
thing and go away right now?"

"Go away--?" I stared at him. "What for?"

"Why should I force myself on that poor, tortured child? Think of her
f