Shortman smiled.

"Awful!"

Gregory turned quickly.

"You feel that window, then; I'm so sorry."

Mrs. Shortman shook her head.

"No, but perhaps Molly does."

The girl at the typewriter said:

"Oh no; please, Mr. Vigil, don't shut it for me."

"Truth and honour?"

"Truth and honour," replied both women. And all three for a moment sat
looking at the sky. Then Mrs. Shortman said:

"You see, you can't get to the root of the evil--that husband of hers."

Gregory turned.

"Ah," he said, "that man! If she could only get rid of him! That ought
to have been done long ago, before he drove her to drink like this. Why
didn't she, Mrs. Shortman, why didn't she?"

Mrs. Shortman raised her eyes, which had such a peculiar spiritual glow.

"I don't suppose she had the money," she said; "and she must have been
such a nice woman then. A nice woman doesn't like to divorce--"

Gregory looked at her.

"What, Mrs. Shortman, you too, you too among the Pharisees?"

Mrs. Shortman flushed.

"She wanted to save him," she said; "she must have wanted to save him."

"Then you and I----" But Gregory did not finish, and turned again to
the window. Mrs. Shortman, too, biting her lips, looked anxiously at the
sky.

Miss Mallow at the typewriter, with a scared face, plied her fingers
faster than ever.

Gregory was the first to speak.

"You must please forgive me," he said gently. "A personal matter; I
forgot myself."

Mrs. Shortman withdrew her gaze from the sky.

"Oh, Mr. Vigil, if I had known----"

Gregory Gregory smiled.

"Don't, don't!" he said; "we've quite frightened poor Miss Mallow!"

Miss Mallow looked round at him, he looked at her, and all three once
more looked at the sky. It was the chief recreation of this little
society.

Gregory worked till nearly three, and walked out to a bun-shop, where he
lunched off a piece of cake and a cup of coffee. He took an omnibus, and
getting on the top, was driven West with a smile on his face and his hat
in his hand. He was thinking of Helen Bellew. It had become a habit with
him to think of her, the best and most beautiful of her sex--a habit in
which he was growing grey, and with which, therefore, he could not part.
And those women who saw him with his uncovered head smiled, and thought:

'What a fine-looking man!'

But George Pendyce, who saw him from the window of the Stoics'
Club, smiled a different smile; the sight of him was always a little
unpleasant to Geo