aul Overt stared. "Does he mean he wishes to cease to see you?"

"I don't know what he means," the girl bravely smiled. "He won't at any
rate see me here."

"And pray why not?"

"I haven't the least idea," said Marian Fancourt, whose visitor found her
more perversely sublime than ever yet as she professed this clear
helplessness.

CHAPTER V

"Oh I say, I want you to stop a little," Henry St. George said to him at
eleven o'clock the night he dined with the head of the profession. The
company--none of it indeed _of_ the profession--had been numerous and was
taking its leave; our young man, after bidding good-night to his hostess,
had put out his hand in farewell to the master of the house. Besides
drawing from the latter the protest I have cited this movement provoked a
further priceless word about their chance now to have a talk, their going
into his room, his having still everything to say. Paul Overt was all
delight at this kindness; nevertheless he mentioned in weak jocose
qualification the bare fact that he had promised to go to another place
which was at a considerable distance.

"Well then you'll break your promise, that's all. You quite awful
humbug!" St. George added in a tone that confirmed our young man's ease.

"Certainly I'll break it--but it was a real promise."

"Do you mean to Miss Fancourt? You're following her?" his friend asked.

He answered by a question. "Oh is _she_ going?"

"Base impostor!" his ironic host went on. "I've treated you handsomely
on the article of that young lady: I won't make another concession. Wait
three minutes--I'll be with you." He gave himself to his departing
guests, accompanied the long-trained ladies to the door. It was a hot
night, the windows were open, the sound of the quick carriages and of the
linkmen's call came into the house. The affair had rather glittered; a
sense of festal things was in the heavy air: not only the influence of
that particular entertainment, but the suggestion of the wide hurry of
pleasure which in London on summer nights fills so many of the happier
quarters of the complicated town. Gradually Mrs. St. George's drawing-
room emptied itself; Paul was left alone with his hostess, to whom he
explained the motive of his waiting. "Ah yes, some intellectual, some
_professional_, talk," she leered; "at this season doesn't one miss it?
Poor dear Henry, I'm so glad!" The young man looked out of the window a
moment, at the c