CHAPTER XXIII

It was a little less than a fortnight after the dinner at Richmond that Kent brought Mrs. Deane-Pitt the ten-thousand-word story that she had wanted, and, like the two earliest stories that he had written for her, it was work to which he would have been glad to see his own name attached. He had promised to let her have half a dozen short stories as soon after its completion as possible, and it was his delight to surprise her by the versatility, as well as the originality, of the invention that he displayed in these. In one he wrote an idyll; in another a gruesome little sketch, bound to attract attention by its weirdness; in a third he seemed to be running through the stalest of devices towards the most commonplace of conclusions, until, lo! in the last half-column there came a literary thunder-clap, and this story was even more startling than its predecessors. But all the links fitted, if a reader liked to take the trouble to look back, and the tragedy had been foreshadowed from the beginning. The tales tickled the fancy of the Editor for whom they were intended. They tickled it so much that he asked Mrs. Deane-Pitt to contribute regularly for a few months; and the lady accepting the compliment and the invitation, Kent continued to supply _The Society Mirror_ with an idyll, or a tragedy, or a comedy every week, astonished at his own fecundity.

It was amazing how his hand was emboldened, I his imagination stimulated, by the knowledge that his work was accepted before it was penned. There were weeks during which he turned out a story for Mrs. Deane-Pitt nearly every day. All the stories were built upon more or less brilliant ideas, each of them was noteworthy and distinctive when it appeared in _The Society Mirror_ or elsewhere; and if his share of the swindle had been punctiliously paid to him now, he would have been making a good deal of money. Even as it was, he was making it in a sense, for his partner always credited him with the sums that were not forthcoming--entering them in an oxidised silver memorandum-book that she kept in one of the drawers of her desk. When he said that it did not matter about that, she laughingly told him not to be a fool.

His conscience was not dull, however, and there were hours when Kent suffered scarcely less acutely than one realises that a wife may sometimes suffer in similar circumstances. His remorse then was just what he had known it would be. From making his projected visit to Monmouth he had excused himself--it was repugnant enough to play the hypocrite in his letters--and by degrees Cynthia ceased to refer to his coming; but while her silence on the point relieved him from the necessity for telling her further falsehoods, it intensified his shame.

His abasement was completed by the seventh rejection of _The Eye of the Beholder_. He sent it off again at once, to Messrs. Kynaston, to get it out of his sight; but the return of the ill-starred package had revived all the passion of his disappointment concerning it, and he could not get rid of the burning at his heart so easily as he did of the parcel. The weight of the slighted manuscript lay on his spirit for days after Thurgate and Tatham's refusal. The irony of it, that Mrs. Deane-Pitt could place his hasty work in the best papers, was enabled to pay him two hundred pounds for writing a novel of which he was ashamed, while his own book, to which he had devoted a year, was scorned on all sides! True, he had had, in his own name, very much better, reviews than those that had been accorded so far to the novel written for her. But ... what a profession?

Once he owned to her something of what he was feeling. He couldn't help himself--he wanted her to comfort him.

"_The Eye of the Beholder_ has come back again," he groaned.

"Really?" she said. "How many is that?"

"God knows! It's awfully hard that _you_ can place whatever I do, Eva, and _I_ get my best stuff kicked back to me from every publisher's office in London. I'm miserable!"

She smiled. She did not mean to be unsympathetic, but Kent hated her for it furiously as she turned her face.

"There's much in a name," she said with a shrug. "What's the difference, though? Your terms aren't bad, 'miserable one,' whether the name is mine or yours. By the way, I can work another tale for _The Metropolis_, if you'll knock it off for me; I was going to write to you."

Kent never appealed to her for pity again. But a little later there came a letter from Cynthia, replying to his brief announcement of Thurgate and Tatham's rejection. Her consolation and prophesies of "success yet" overflowed four sheets, and the man's throat was tight as he read them.

Well, he must do the tale for _The Metropolis_! But he would write some short stories for himself as well, he determined. It had not been a lucrative occupation when he essayed it before, but those early stories had been the wrong kind of thing--he perceived it now: he would write some short stories of the pattern that was so successful when it was signed "Eva Deane-Pitt."

He soon began to see his work over her signature in almost every paper that he looked at. If he turned the leaves of a magazine on a book-stall, a tale of his own met his eyes, signed "Eva Deane-Pitt"; if he picked up a periodical in a restaurant, a familiar sentence might flash out of the pages at him, and there would be another of his stories "By Eva Deane-Pitt." Yes, he would submit to the editors on his own account! He would not receive such terms as she, that he knew; he doubted strongly whether he would even receive so much as she spared to him after retaining the larger share. But he could, and he would, get what was dear to him--the recognition and the kudos to which he was entitled!

He found that he did not write so quickly for himself as in his capacity of ghost, but he was not discouraged, for he felt that he was writing better. For a week he did nothing for the woman at all; he wrote all day and half the night as "Humphrey Kent," and when a manuscript was declined by _The Society Mirror_ he sent it to _The Metropolis_, and forwarded the story rejected by _The Metropolis_ to _The Society Mirror_. He could not abandon his work for her entirely, but under the pressure that she put upon him, and his new interests, he wrote for her more and more hastily--wrote frank and unmitigated rubbish at last, and on one occasion candidly told her so.

She had telegraphed to him at six o'clock, begging him to call, and he had risen from his table feeling that his head was vacant. She clamoured for a two-thousand-word story by the first post the following morning, and insisted, as usual, that "anything would do." He assured her that he was too exhausted even to invent a motive; how could he produce two thousand words before he slept? She overruled his objections, hanging about him with caresses. She made him promise that the sketch should reach her in time.

"Write twaddle, dearest boy," was her parting injunction, "but write it! A motive? A mercenary girl jilts her lover because he is poor, and then her new fiancé loses his fortune, and the jilted lover succeeds to a dukedom! What does it matter? Write a story that Noah told to his family in the Ark--only cover enough pages. Write any rot; simply fill it out. I depend on you, Humphrey, mind!"

He went home and did it--on the lines she had laid down. She wanted drivel--she should have it! He did not stop to think at all. He wrote, without a pause or a correction, as rapidly as his pen would glide, and posted the tale to her before half-past ten. A note went with it.

"I have done as you ordered," he scribbled. "Don't blame me because no editor will take such muck now you are obeyed."

She had no complaint to make when he saw her next. And it was after this that Kent's work for her was uniformly fatuous, while he lavished on his own a wealth of fastidious care for which she would have mocked him had she known. He visited her at much longer intervals now, for a disgust of her caresses was growing in him, a horror of the amorous afternoons, which ended always with a plea for additional tales. But that cowardice prevented him, he would have stayed away altogether. There grew something like horror of the woman herself, insatiable, no matter with how much work he might supply her--coaxing him for "two little stories more; anything will do--I must have a new costume, darling, really!" while a batch of manuscript that he had brought to her lay in her lap. He could remember now, with her arms about him, the many original ideas that she had had from him at the beginning, and he felt with a shudder that her clutch was deadly. First she had had his brains, and now she stole his conscience. He foresaw that, if the strain that she put upon him continued, a day must come when the imagination that she was squeezing like an orange would be sterile, or fruitful of nothing better than the literary abortions with which his mistress was content.

His dismay at his position did not wane. It became so evident that, by degrees, a coldness crept into the woman's manner towards him. He was at no pains to dispel it. That their relations drifted on to a purely business footing inspired him with no other fear than that presently she might make him a scene and entail upon him the disagreeable necessity for declaring, as delicately as he could, that his infidelity to his wife had been a madness that he violently regretted, and would never repeat. The obvious retort would be so superficially true that fervently he trusted that the necessity would not arise.

Meanwhile the short stories submitted in his own name, with silent prayers, had all been refused; but, undeterred by the failure, he wrote more and more. The present tenants of No. 64 were anxious to renew their agreement for another six months, and he was pleased to hear it. The prospect of meeting Cynthia again frightened him; and, closing readily with the off er that afforded him a respite, he remained at his literary forge in Soho, writing for Mrs. Deane-Pitt and for himself--seeing sometimes three of his tales for her published, by different papers, in the same week, and finding the tales submitted in the lowlier name of "Humphrey Kent" returned without exception.

He would once have said that such a state of things couldn't be, but now he discovered that it could be, and was. There was not at this stage: a periodical or magazine in London that Humphrey Kent did not essay in vain, and there were; not more than three or four (of the kind that one sees in a club or an educated woman's room) in which his stuff did not appear, at a substantial rate of payment, when it was supposed to be by Mrs. Deane-Pitt. There were not in London five papers making a feature of fiction, which did not repeatedly reject the man's best work, signed by himself, and accept his worst, signed by somebody else. Not five of the penny or sixpenny; publications--not five among the first or second-class--not five editors appraising fiction in editorial chairs who did not either find or assume a story bearing the unfamiliar name of "Humphrey Kent" to be below their standard, while they paid ten or twelve guineas for a tale scribbled by the same author in a couple of hours when it was falsely represented to be by Mrs. Deane-Pitt. During nine months he was never offered a single guinea by an editor for a tale. Every story that he submitted during nine months was declined, and every story that he gave to Mrs. Deane-Pitt was sold. Raging, he swore that some day he would set the facts forth in a novel; and even as he swore it, he knew that they would be challenged and that, in at least one literary organ of eminence, a critic would write, "We do not find the situation probable."

Once an editor did know his name. He was the Editor of a fashionable magazine, and Kent had called at the office to inquire about a manuscript that had been lying there for a long while. The gentleman was very courteous: he did not remember the title, and, unfortunately, he could not put his hand on the tale at the moment, but he promised to have a search made for it, and to read it as soon as it was found.

A letter from him (and the manuscript) reached Kent the same week. It was as considerate a letter of rejection as any one could dictate. The Editor began by saying that the story "was clever, as all Mr. Kent touched was clever, but----" And then he proceeded to analyse the plot, to demonstrate that the motive was too slight for the purpose. The tone was so kindly that, though Kent could not perceive the justice of the criticism--he was sensible enough to try--he felt a glow of gratitude towards the writer; and his appreciation was deepened when the following post brought him a copy of the current issue of the magazine, "With compliments."

He opened it at once, and the first thing that he saw in it was a story done for Mrs. Deane-Pitt--the story that he had written, tired and insolently careless, about the mercenary girl and the jilted lover and the succession to the dukedom.

And this, too, he swore, should be some day recorded in a novel, though a critic, knowing less about it than the author, would "not find the situation probable."

Now, when he was least expecting it, there came to him the first gleam of encouragement that he had had since he received his last review. Messrs. Kynaston wrote, offering to undertake the publication of _The Eye of the Beholder_, if he were willing to accept forty pounds for the copyright.

He did not hesitate even for an instant; he said "Thank God!" as devoutly as if he had never expected more for it.

Turquand had just come in.

"It's a wicked price," grunted Turquand; "but I suppose you'll take it if you can't get them to spring?"

"Take it! I could take them to my heart for it! Oh, thank God! I mean it. Yes, it's beggarly, it's awful; but, at any rate, the book 'll see the light. Price? It isn't a price at all, but the thing 'll be published. There's quite enough money for us to live while I'm writing my next, and this will send me to it with double energy. I shall go to Kynaston's to-morrow morning."

He did go, and, though he was less enthusiastic there, his attempt to induce the publisher to increase the terms was but weak. Seven rejections had made a high hand unattainable.

"I got a hundred for my first," he said, "and you offer me forty for my second. It isn't scaling the ladder with rapidity."

"The other was longer, perhaps," suggested Mr. Kynaston, tapping his fingers together pensively--"three volumes?"

"Don't you reckon that this will make three volumes, then?" said Kent.

"Two. It's unfortunately short; that's the only fault I have to find with it. I like it--it's out of the common; but there isn't enough of it." He sighed. "I am sorry that 'forty' is the most I can say. I considered the subject very deeply before I wrote you--very deeply indeed."

His expression implied that he had lain awake all night considering, and that regret at being unable to offer more might even keep him awake again to-night.

He did not disguise his opinion of the novel, however, especially after the matter was settled.

"Send us something else, Mr. Kent," he said warmly, as he saw the author downstairs and pressed his hand--"something a trifle longer--and we shall be able to do better for you. Yours is a very rare style; you have remarkable power, if I may say so. If fine work always meant a fine sale, _The Eye of the Beholder_ should see six editions. I shall get it out at once. Good-day to you: and don't forget--make your next book a little longer!"

Turquand would not be back for some hours, and Kent did not hurry home. He sauntered through the streets reflecting. He resolved that now he would do ghost-work no more, and he wondered how Eva would receive the announcement. Disappointing as she would doubtless find it, she would not have had much to complain of, he thought; he congratulated himself anew on their liaison having ended, since it left him but one association to sever, instead of two. Again an access of remorse in its most poignant form assailed him, and he wished he could bear his good news to Cynthia in lieu of writing it--wished he could confess to Cynthia--wondered if the desire to do so was mad.

This desire had fastened on Kent more than once. He thought he would feel less guilty towards her--would _be_ less guilty towards her--if she knew. There had been moments when, if they had not been separated, he would have told her the truth in a burst, and, whether she pardoned him or not, have lifted his head, feeling happier for the fact that the avowal had been made. He did not imagine that his craving to confess to her was any shining virtue. He was conscious, just as he had been conscious in Paris, when he had informed her casually of the supper in the avenue Wagram, that it was as much the weakness of his character as its nobility which urged him to voice the load that lay on his mind; but, weak or noble, the longing was always there, and at times it mastered him completely.

Sleet began to fall, and he went into a tea-room and ordered some coffee. A copy of _Fashion_ lay on the table, and, mechanically turning the pages, he noticed that the feature of the issue was an instalment of a story in three parts by Lady Cornwallis. The name arrested his attention, for she was the widow of a man who had been a connection of the late Deane-Pitt's, and Kent was aware that Eva and she were on friendly terms. He glanced at the heading with an ironical smile; the lady was not known to him as an author, though she had figured prominently of late in the witness-box, where a shrewd solicitor, and a dressmaker of distinction, had posed her in a quite romantic light; he surmised bitterly that her maiden effort in fiction had been remunerated more handsomely than his second novel. What was his astonishment, on glancing at the opening paragraph, to discover that the story "By Lady Cornwallis" was another of the stories that had been written by himself for Mrs. Deane-Pitt!

As a matter of fact, the Editor, thinking that her name would be a draw just now, had offered Lady Cornwallis a hundred pounds for a tale to run through three numbers. Lady Cornwallis, who had never tried to write anything more elaborate than a love-letter in her life, and who was being dunned to desperation for an account at a livery-stable, had gone to Mrs. Deane-Pitt to do it for her. Mrs. Deane-Pitt, who wrote much less quickly than she pretended, had relegated the duty to Kent. It was a literary house-that-Jack-built. Lady Cornwallis, fearing that her friend might ascertain how much the Editor paid, had ingenuously halved the sum with her; Mrs. Deane-Pitt, confident that the young man would be unable to ascertain, had given to him ten pounds. At the details of the transaction Kent could only guess, as he sat staring at his work while his coffee got cold; but the evolution of the story, perpetrated in a Soho attic for ten pounds, and published as Lady Cornwallis's at the cost of a hundred, was interesting.

He was fiercely and inconsistently resentful. In one way it mattered nothing to him. Since his stuff wasn't printed over his own name, it was unimportant over whose name it appeared. But the perception did not lessen his angry sense of having been duped. He remembered the circumstances in which he had written this tale and the lies that Eva had told him about it. Was he to become the ghost of every impostor in London?

Though he did not refer to the discovery that he had made, it lent a firmness to his tone when he informed her that his book was accepted and that he was going down to the country to devote a year to another. She heard him without remonstrance. Whatever her faults, she had the virtue of being a woman of the world, and she did not endow the parting, for which she was partially prepared, with any tactless tragedy. For an instant only, recalling the benefit of histrionics at Richmond, she considered the feasibility of sentiment begetting a reconciliation; then she dismissed the idea. The man was remorseful --not of having become estranged from her, but of having succumbed--and sentiment would be wasted to-day. Besides, it would make the interview painful for him, and she didn't care for him half enough to be eager to give him a bad time. She shrugged her shoulders.

"Everything has an end," she said languidly--"even _Daniel Deronda_. I owe you a lot of money, by-the-by. I'm afraid I can't square accounts with you at the moment, but I suppose you don't mind trusting me?"

"You owe me nothing," said Kent. "If my boorishness has left any liking for me possible, let me have the pleasure of feeling that I did you one or two trifling services."

But he did not go down to the country. More than ever he felt that to rejoin his wife with his guilt unacknowledged would be a greater trial than he could endure. She was so innocent. If she had been a different kind of woman, his reluctance would have been duller and easier to overcome; but to have been false to Cynthia made him feel as if he had robbed a blind girl.

That he could not delay rejoining her much longer he was distressfully aware. It was ten months since she had gone away, and even if the people in Streatham wished to retain the house for a third half-year, as he understood was likely--their return to New York, or wherever they had come from, being indefinitely postponed--that would be no reason why he and Cynthia should not live together at Monmouth or somewhere else.

He had written her that Messrs. Kynaston had taken _The Eye of the Beholder_, and during the next day or two he was in hourly expectation of her reply. On the third afternoon after he had posted his letter, the door opened and she came into the room.

He had not heard the bell ring, and at the sound of her footstep he turned quickly--and then, almost before he realised it, his wife was in his arms, laughing and half crying, saying how glad she was to see him, how delighted she was at the book's acceptance.

"I had to come," she exclaimed--"I had to! Oh, darling! you don't mind because the money isn't much? Think what Kynaston said of it! And for your next you'll get proper terms.... Well, are you surprised to see me? Let me look at you. You're different. What have you been doing to yourself? And Baby--you wouldn't know Baby. He talks!... I've been praying you'd be at home. I wouldn't let them show me in; I've been picturing walking in on you all the way in the train.... Sweetheart!" She squeezed him to her again, and then held him at arm's length, regarding him gaily. "You've changed," she repeated; "you look more serious. And I? Am I all right--am I a disappointment?"

"You're beautiful," said Kent slowly. "You have changed, too."

He gazed at her with a curious sense of unfamiliarity, striving to define to himself the alteration that puzzled him. Her face had gained something besides the hues of health. It seemed to him that her eyes were deeper, that her smile was more complex. Vaguely he felt that he had thought of her as a girl and was beholding a woman--that he had insulted a woman who was lovelier than any he had known.

"Aren't you going to invite me to take off my things? May I?"

"Do," he said, with the same sense of strangeness. "Can I help you?" He took them from her, awkwardly, and put her into a comfortable chair, and made up the fire. "It's a new hat, it suits you! I always liked you in a little hat. Did you I get it down there?"

"I trimmed it myself," she said. "Mind the pin!"

"You shall have some tea--or would you rather have dinner? You must be hungry!"

"Tea, please, and cake. Can you produce cake?"

"There's a confectioner's just round the corner." He rang the bell.

"Then, madeira. I didn't tell the servant who I was; better say 'my wife' casually when she comes in. I suppose you don't have ladies to tea and madeira cake, as a rule?"

"Not as a rule," he said--"no."

She laughed again, and stretched her shoes to the blaze luxuriously.

"So this is the room. This is where you lived before we knew each other. How funny that it should be the first time I've been in it! I've often imagined you here, and it isn't the least bit like what I fancied, of course; I always saw the window over there! Well, talk to me--tell me all! what you are thinking about? I believe you find me plain now the hat's off!"

Tea was brought to them in about a quarter of an hour, and they sat before the fire sipping it, and stealing glances at each other--the woman's, amused, delicious; Kent's, guilty and tortured. He was tempted to kiss her, but could not bring himself to do it deliberately; and with every phrase that fell from her lips his heart grew; heavier.

"You've scarcely been to Strawberry Hill all the time, I hear," she said. "This is very good tea, Humphrey!"

"Not very often; I've been so busy. Yes, it isn't bad, is it? the landlady gets it for me. Are they offended with me?"

"H'mph! they'll look over it. You'll have to be very nice and repentant."

"I will. I'll go this week if I can."

"This week? You must take me to-night!" she cried. "What do you suppose is going to become of me? I can't stop here.... Shall I give you another cup?"

Kent felt the blood sinking from his face. His hands shook as he bent over the fire, and for a moment he had no voice to reply.

"You don't go back to Monmouth to-night?" he asked harshly, without looking at her.

"N--no," she said; "I can't go back till to-morrow."

"I was thinking of the child," he muttered.

"He's as safe with the nurse as with me," she answered; "I wouldn't have left him even for a day if he hadn't been."

"I see," said Kent.

His pause appeared to him to become significant and terrible.

"I can't go there with you this evening," he said abruptly; "it can't be done. I have to be here--there is some one I must meet. I mean, I can take you there, but I can't possibly stay. You--you must forgive me, Cynthia."

Still he was not looking at her. When she spoke, her tone was different.

"You will do as you like," she said quietly.

He lifted himself, and faced her.

"Cynthia!"

"Well?"

"Cynthia, don't think I don't care for you."

She did not answer, but she was very pale, and her lips were proudly set.

"You're angry with me?" he stammered.

"What prevents you--your business? If you're too late for a train, there are hansoms. It would be expensive, I know----"

"'Expensive!'"

"Perhaps it might cost half a sovereign."

"Cynthia! It's impossible."

"Oh, please don't let's talk about it!" she said. "I made a mistake, that's all. I've made a good many since I married you; this was one more."

"I _can't_ go," gasped Kent, fighting for his words. "I----If I cared for you less, I should! I can't go, because there's something I must tell you first. If ... but you won't. I want you to know ... I've a confession to make to you. It's over, but ... I've acted badly to you; I haven't the right to go to you. For God's sake, don't hate me more than you can help--I've been unfaithful."

Her first sensation was as if, without warning, he had dealt her a brutal blow in the face. There was the same staggered sense of fright, succeeded by the same sick wave of horror. Another woman had known him? Her brain did not leap for details instantaneously, as a man's would have leapt in the inverse situation; the name the woman bore, her position--what had such things to do with it? Curiosity to compare her with herself in looks would follow; now, while she stared at him with bloodless features, she was conscious of nothing but the pollution: another woman had known him. Kent stared back at her, appalled at her aspect; but he divined what she felt no more than he could have understood her emotions had she analysed them for him. "Another woman had known him" was the tumult in her soul; he believed her pride outraged that he had known another woman. The difference was enormous. The curiosity and thirst for vengeance apart, the wife's sensation was what the husband's would have been, had he heard of her own defilement. But that he himself appeared to her defiled he could not grasp; unworthy, contemptible, corrupt, he realised, but "defiled," no.

"Cynthia, forgive me!"

She swayed a little as his voice struck her agony.

"I'll try."

"You see why I couldn't go?"

"Yes," she said hoarsely.

"I should have told you anyhow soon.... You aren't sorry I've told you?"

"I don't know. I think ... I think I'm sorry just now. I shall be able to thank you for that later."

"I did it for the best," said Kent.

"You were right."

He leant against the mantelpiece, his chin sunk. The only sound in the room came from the kettle, on which the woman's eyes were fixed intently. The clock of St. Giles-in-the-Fields tolled four.

"What am I to do?" he said.

"Oh," she moaned, "don't ask me; I can't think yet.... You've killed me, Humphrey--you've killed me!"

He dropped before her chair and stroked her hand. Her pain writhed like a live thing at his touch, but, in pity for him, she let the hand lie still and suffered.

"Did you ... love her so much?" she asked.

"God knows I didn't!"

"And yet----Humphrey, she wasn't----?"

"I was mad. She was a lady. It wasn't love; I didn't love her at all.... If you were a man, you'd understand. I sinned with my body, but my mind--she never had that ...it was with you--with you. It was the animal in me--how can I explain to an angel?"

Presently she said:

"Does a woman ever learn to understand a man? She gives him her life; yet to the end----They begin differently.... He has known everything before he comes to her, and she has known nothing. She's told that it doesn't matter, that it's right. She doesn't believe it in her heart --the more she loves him, the less she believes it--but she tries to persuade herself she believes it. It's wrong--wrong! To him she's a new girl, and to her _he_ is a new world. How can marriage be the same thing to both. You didn't love her, but you gave yourself to her. Could a husband think less of his wife's sin for a reason like that?"

Kent rose, and stood beside her dumbly. Some glimmer of her point of view reached him and confused him by its strangeness.

"I'll do whatever you want. What can I say?"

"Help me to forget," she said in a low voice. "Will you help me to forget?"

"You'll let me come to you?"

"Give me a few days--wait a few days. Only I can't be your wife again, Humphrey, all at once--I can't.... Ah, don't think me unforgiving; it isn't that. Come to me, if you will, and work, and we'll be good friends together. Don't be afraid, I won't make it bad for you, I promise--I'll never remind you even by a look.... Are the terms too hard?"

"You're merciful."

The seconds crept away.

"I must go," she said; "I'll write to you."

"Shall you go to your mother's?"

"I must; there's no train to Monmouth after three. Will you send for a cab to take me to Waterloo? I'll tell them you were coming with me, but something prevented you.... Can I bathe my eyes in your room before I go?"

Kent showed her where it was, and waited for her in the parlour. Then they went downstairs together to the cab. She leant forward and gave him her hand.

"Don't be afraid of me," she whispered again.

"God bless you!" he said, closing the door.