“But I’ve got to give it up,” she added. “I can’t leave Dad.” “I heard you come in,” she said. “You’re not busy, are you?”!

“Do you still go to the chapel?” she asked him a little hesitatingly. “He will be pleased to find you here, waiting for him,” he said with a smile, handing her the letter. “He will be here some time to-morrow.”

“That tells him to talk all that twaddle?” demanded Miss Ensor. “Have you heard him?” These small hypocrisies were new to her. She hoped she was not damaging her character. But it was good, watching him slyly from under drawn-down lids, to see the flash of triumph that would come into his tired eyes in answer to her half-protesting: “Yes, I see your point, I hadn’t thought of that,” her half reluctant admission that “perhaps” he was right, there; that “perhaps” she was wrong. It was delightful to see him young again, eager, boyishly pleased with himself. It seemed there was a joy she had not dreamed of in yielding victory as well as in gaining it. A new tenderness was growing up in her. How considerate, how patient, how self-forgetful he had always been. She wanted to mother him. To take him in her arms and croon over him, hushing away remembrance of the old sad days. “Oh, you needn’t look so scared,” laughed the girl, “I haven’t come down to that.” Her voice had changed. It had a note of shrillness. In some indescribable way she had grown coarse. “I’m a kept woman,” she explained. “What else is any woman?”