"I have reserved a compartment. I suspected that things were not going
to turn out well. I thought the long journey to London alone would be
terrible. If things had turned out right, you would not have seen me."

She had let him place her in a carriage, look after her wants as if she
had been a child, hold her in his arms, tend her with the magnificent
sympathy of his silence. That had been the real beginning. Stella had
known him as the merest of friends before. She had met him here and
there at a supper party, at a dancing club, at some Bohemian country
house; and then suddenly he had guessed what others had not, and
foolishly had gone out of his way to be kind.

"She would have died if I hadn't travelled with her," Luttrell argued
silently. "She would have thrown herself out of the carriage, or when
she reached home she would have----" and his argument stopped, and he
glanced at her uneasily.

Undisciplined, was the epithet she had used of herself. You never knew
what crazy thing she might do. There was daintiness but no order in her
life; the only law she knew was given to her by a fastidious taste.

"Of course, Wub, I have always known that you never cared for me as I do
for you. So it was bound to end some time." She caught his hand to her
heart for a second, and then, dropping it, ran from his side.




CHAPTER III