be so
wicked! It's not like you; I don't know you when you talk like this.
You'd break their hearts!"

"I don't know that this comes well from you, Babs."

"Nothing comes well from me. But, if I can't undo the harm I've done, I
may at least stop adding to it. If you don't come back . . . When it's
too late, you'll never forgive yourself."

He shook his head and looked at her defiantly.

"You should have thought of that when we first met in this room. Only
one thing will bring me back or keep me from going."

"Dear Eric, don't start that again!"

"Thanks! It doesn't amuse _me_ to be strung up and cut down and strung
up again. . . . I was facing things--till Lady Poynter shewed the
devilish irony to arrange this meeting."

"Won't you come back for my sake?" she whispered.

"To be told that you're going to marry some one else?"

"You may not be told that. I don't know."

Eric was filled with a blaze of anger; he had to pause long before he
could be sure of his voice.

"You _still_ don't want to let me go? The pathetic invocation of my
mother----"

Barbara tried to speak and then turned away with a helpless shrug. Eric
woke from a trance to a thunder of opposing voices. Lady Poynter was
retailing the secret history of the latest political crisis and the
fall of the Coalition Government. His wheezing, well-fed host was
attacking the Board of Trade with ill-disguised venom. "They've cut down
imports to such an extent," he was saying, "that in six months' time you
won't be able to get a cigar fit to smoke. I went to my man this
morning--he's a fellow I've dealt with all my life, and my father before
me--he promised me _half_ a cabinet--and then made a favour of it!"
Another voice enquired in a drawl: "What is it exactly that you're
lecturing on, Mr. Lane?"

Barbara's head was still turned from him, and he resigned himself to the
reshuffle, noticing with surprise that a finger-bowl had been placed in
front of him. He could not remember having eaten anything since the
fish. And he had been drinking the rather sickly Gabarnac without
tasting it.

"You asked my opinion of this wine, sir," he said to Lord Poynter,
belatedly attentive; in a moment he was swallowed up in a discussion
which dragged its way through dessert until Lady Poynter pushed back her
chair and rustled majestically to the door.

She was hardly outside the room before his host sidled conspiratorially
into the empty chair next him.

"Do you kn