door of Emmy's Mansions in Chelsea.

She looked at him very piteously, like a frightened child. Her pretty mouth
was never strong, but when the corners drooped it was babyish. She slipped
her hand in his.

"Don't leave me just yet. It's silly, I know--but this awful journey has
taken everything out of me. Every bit of it has been worse than the last.
Edith--that's my maid--will light a fire--you must get warm before you
start--and she'll make some coffee. Oh, do come. You can keep the cab."

"But what will your maid think?" asked Septimus, who for all his vagueness
had definite traditions as to the proprieties of life.

"What does it matter? What does anything in this ghastly world matter? I'm
frightened, Septimus, horribly frightened. I daren't go up by myself. Oh!
Come!"

Her voice broke on the last word. Saint Anthony would have yielded; also
his pig. Septimus handed her out of the cab, and telling the cabman to
wait, followed her through the already opened front door of the Mansions up
to her flat. She let herself in with her latchkey and showed him into the
drawing-room, turning on the electric light as he entered.

"I'll go and wake Edith," she said. "Then we can have some breakfast. The
fire's laid. Do you mind putting a match to it?"

She disappeared and Septimus knelt down before the grate and lit the paper.
In a second or two the flame caught the wood, and, the blower being down,
it blazed fiercely. He spread his ice-cold hands out before it, incurious
of the futile little room whose draperies and fripperies and inconsiderable
flimsiness of furniture proclaimed its owner, intent only on the elemental
need of warmth. He was disturbed by the tornadic entrance of Emmy.

"She's not here!" she exclaimed tragically. Her baby face was white and
there were dark shadows under the eyes which stared at him with a touch of
madness. "She's not here!"

"Perhaps she has gone out for a walk," Septimus suggested, as if London
serving-maids were in the habit of taking the air at eight o'clock on a
foggy morning.

But Emmy heard him not. The dismaying sense of utter loneliness smote her
down. It was the last straw. Edith, on whom she had staked all her hopes of
physical comfort, was not there. Overstrained in body, nerves, and mind,
she sank helplessly in the chair which Septimus set out for her before the
fire, too exhausted to cry. She began to speak in a queer, toneless voice:

"I don't know what to do. Edith coul