"Yes," she said, "it is honest!"

"I should have married her," the young man continued, "and I should
have been happy. I had my eye on a villa - not too near her parents
- and I saw my way to a little increase of salary. I should have
taken to gardening, to walks in the Park, with an occasional theatre,
and I should have thoroughly enjoyed a fortnight every summer at
Skegness or Sutton-on-Sea. We should have saved a little money. I
should have gone to church regularly, and if possible I should have
filled some minor public offices. You may call this bourgeois - it
was my idea of happiness."

"Was!" she murmured.

"Is still," he declared, sharply, "but I shall never attain to it.
To-night I had to leave Maud - to leave the supper table of Daisy
Villa - through the window!"

She looked at him in amazement.

"The police," he explained. "That brute Dory was at the bottom
of it."

"But surely," she murmured, "you told me that you had a bona-fide
situation - "

"So I had," he declared, "and I was a fool not to be content with
it. It was my habit of taking long country walks, and their rotten
auditing, which undid me! You understand that this was all before
I met Maud? Since the day I spoke to her, I turned over a new leaf.