t a common name. I think I have heard it somewhere.'

They were under the archway by this time, in the brief shelter of which
the sanguine-faced, red-waist-coated lodge-keeper was taking his nightly
constitutional. They answered the touch of the hat with which he saluted
them.

'Which is your way?' asked Mr. Barter.

'Westward,' said Phil.

'Mine is east,' said Barter, 'so we part here. We are bound to meet
again before long. Good-night.'

'Good-night, and many thanks for taking my clumsiness in such good
part.'

Barter's ready smile beamed out again. They shook hands before parting
like old acquaintances, and Philip walked on, through the incessant
noise of Holborn into quieter Bloomsbury Street, along the eastern side
of Bedford Square, where the bare trees were shivering in a bath of fog,
and into Gower Street. Half way down that hideous thoroughfare he came
upon a house, one of the few which still retain the old lamp-iron and
extinguisher before their doors, and knocking, was admitted by a trim
maid, with the smiling alacrity due to a frequent and favoured visitor,
and by her conducted to the drawing-room, where sat a young lady engaged
in a transparent pretence of being absorbed in a novel. The pretence
vanished as the door closed behind the handmaiden, and the young lady
jumped up and ran forward to meet him, with such a glad welcome in her
face as answered the appeal in his own. It does not need that we should
look at her with Philip's eyes to pronounce her charmingly pretty, or
to admire the face, at once shy and frank, with which she nestled beside
him.

'I thought you were never coming,' she said.

'Am I so late, then?'

'It seemed so, and now you are come, tell me what you have been doing.'

'Working, and thinking of you.'

'You work too much, Phil.' She did her best to ignore the second item
of his day's occupation, but the deepened flush and her avoidance of her
lover's eyes answered it more effectively than words could have done.
'You are getting quite pale and thin. No wonder, sitting all alone all
day long in those musty old chambers.'

'Well, you see, Patty, the more I work, the sooner I shall cease to be
all alone.' The flush deepened again, and the hand trembled in his like
a caught bird. 'And as for working too much, I don't believe that's
possible. Work never killed anybody yet, and idleness has killed a good
many. It's better to work than sit still and wait for briefs which never
co