her.

"Returning to the other thing," he began slowly. "We've not exactly
disposed of it, have we?"

"I thought we were going to leave it alone," she answered timidly.

"That's out of the question." He banged open his opera hat and squeezed
it shut again. "Why won't you have a simple contradiction in the press?"
he pleaded.

"I don't want it. Isn't that enough?"

"Certainly. But . . . I don't want to say good-bye, if I can help it."

Barbara looked at him slowly and carefully; she was utterly at fault.

"It's for you to decide," she said.

"There doesn't seem to be any alternative."

She stood up and wrapped a lace scarf round her throat. As he helped her
into her cloak, she looked reflectively round the room. Save that the
windows were closed to shut out the December fog, save that there were
chrysanthemums in place of roses, nothing had changed since the night
when she forced her way in and sipped soda-water from a heavy goblet and
broke the glass horseshoe and laughed and talked and suddenly cried. . . .

As he watched, her bones seemed to bend like soft wax, and she sank on
to the sofa, burying her face in her arms and sobbing convulsively. Eric
stood motionless by the fire, because he could not trust himself to
move. Her shoulders, which he had always admired for their line and
wonderful whiteness, rose in quick jerks and subsided with a quiver; she
shook with the abandonment of a bird in its death-spasm.

"Barbara!"

"Oh, can't I even cry?" she moaned.

"Darling, you break my heart when you go on like this!" He found himself
kneeling on the floor with his arm round her shoulder and drawing her
head back until he could kiss her wet cheek. "If you'll shew me _any_
other way out of it----"

"Why can't you let it go on?" she wailed.

"I can't; I suppose I love you too much."

"Too much to give me the one thing--Eric, you're not going to turn me
away?"

"I'm not going to take risks with your reputation."

"But it would be just the same! If you _put_ your denial into the
paper, people would still go on talking as long as we went on meeting!
Does it matter? Do you mind it so much, Eric? Oh, my dear, I can't
afford to lose you!"

She fell away from him, and he walked back to the fire. This, then, was
the moment that came to every man once--the moment that he forced into
the lives of his puppets once a play.

"Barbara!"

She was still shaken with sobs.

"Barbara, are you listening? You said you