his hands and fidgeted
restlessly by the fire. Barbara had lost her expression of amusement and
was honestly puzzled that he should make so great a pother about a piece
of idle gossip.

They remained without speaking until a maid entered to announce dinner.

"I'm sorry you've been worried," she said gently. "For once it really
wasn't my fault. . . . I suppose I'm hardened to this sort of thing. Why
don't you just not worry? And give me dinner, because I'm very hungry."

"I can't leave it like that," said Eric, as he accompanied her to the
dining-room. "A plain statement in the press----"

"It would simply draw attention to it."

"Well, that's one of the solutions ruled out."

"And I'm left with the choice of marrying you--you haven't asked me
_yet_!--or saying good-bye? There _is_ another alternative, Eric: and
that is to shew you're too sensible to mind what silly people say about
you."

Eric shook his head obstinately.

"No good, I'm afraid."

"Well, try to think of something else," she sighed. "Don't spoil our
evening, sweetheart."

The intermittent presence of the maid, rather than any state of mental
satisfaction in Eric, kept the conversation peaceful. He almost forgot
the annoyances of the last week in watching Barbara's delighted
enjoyment of a new experience so trivial as dining with him for the
first time in his own flat. Nothing escaped her curious notice--a wine
that he gave her to try with the scallops, the Lashmar chrysanthemums in
a flat, blue-glass bowl, the unaging pleasure of an invisibly lighted
room, Australian passion-fruit at dessert, a new artist's proof. . . .

"You're really like a child at a pantomime, Babs," he laughed, when they
were alone.

She rose slowly and bent over him, touching his forehead with her lips
and then kneeling beside his chair.

"I'm interested in everything!" she cried. "I love new experiences! At
least, I _did_. I loved meeting new people, hearing new things--the
world was so wonderful. And then--I never understood why I went on
living. . . . _You_ made life wonderful for me again. The first night
we met, when I came here. . . . You were quite right, Eric, I was a
fool. . . . But somehow I wasn't afraid. I knew you'd put your hand in
the fire for me."

He stroked her head and gave a sudden shiver. No one would ever know
what path he might have chosen that night out of the maze of his
disordered emotions.

"In those days you were nothing to me," he murm