when Barbara was not
reproaching herself for the engagement, she affected the abject humility
of a slave whom he had bought for his pleasure. Perhaps she was amusing
herself with a new emotion, perhaps she wanted to keep him alert and
suspended, perhaps she enjoyed the vision of herself torn between the
two men who wanted her more than anything in the world. . . .

2

For the second morning in succession Barbara did not telephone. Eric
waited until noon and then asked her to dine with him.

"I will, if you--want me to," she answered with the new servile
listlessness; and he wondered again whether she was trying to exact some
novel abandonment of adoration or to exhaust him by passive resistance.
"I believe we _have_ people dining," she added.

"Well, choose some other night," he suggested.

"Oh, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. And I'm going to the country
to-morrow."

"But I thought you were going to be in London till Christmas."

"I'm supposed to be ill," she answered and hung up the receiver before
he could say anything more.

Eric returned to his work, affecting unconsciousness of her alternating
indifference and hostility. In the afternoon Agnes Waring telephoned to
say that she was unexpectedly in London and would like to have tea with
him. He welcomed her cordially, only hoping that she would not stay long
enough to clash with Babs, and, guiltily reminded of her letter, put
aside his work and began writing to Jack. Once or twice, as he paused to
fill his pipe, the old feeling of duplicity came back, as on the Sundays
when he walked home from Red Roofs in jubilation after Agnes had told
him with her unchanging composure that there was still no news of her
brother. And now he was writing a gossipy, facetious letter. . . . Eric
tore the envelope in two--and then hesitated. Jack had been given his
opportunity, and he had not taken it.

Agnes did not arrive until nearly six o'clock and then came attended by
a young officer.

"You remember Mr. Benyon," she said. "We brought him to dine at the
Mill-House last year. He hadn't seen 'The Bomb-Shell,' so we went to the
_matinee_ to-day."

"Jolly good, if I may say so," murmured Benyon. "Hope you don't mind my
buttin' in like this? Agnes said----"

"I obviously couldn't come here alone, Dick," she interrupted; and Eric
wondered whether they would have left before Barbara came alone to dine
with him.

He wondered too what intimacy Agnes had reached with