stretching out her hands towards the vague still figure whose
eyes had called so piteously to her out of their depths, and fell
fainting in the doorway. Lawford stood motionless, vacantly
watching Sheila, who knelt, chafing the cold hands. 'She has
fainted?' he said; 'oh, Sheila, tell me--only fainted?'

Sheila made no answer; did not even raise her eyes.

'Some day, Sheila' he began in a dull voice, and broke off, and
without another word, without even another glance at the still
face and blue, twitching lids, he passed her rapidly by, and in
another instant Sheila heard the house-door shut. She got up
quickly, and after a glance into the vacant bedroom turned the
key; then she hastened upstairs for sal volatile and eau de
cologne....

It was yet clear daylight when Lawford appeared beneath the
portico of his house. With a glance of circumspection that
almost seemed to suggest a fear of pursuit, he descended the
steps, only to be made aware in so doing that Ada was with a kind
of furtive eagerness pointing out the mysterious Dr Ferguson to a
steadily gazing cook. One or two well-known and many a
well-remembered face he encountered in the thin stream of City men
treading blackly along the pavement. It was a still, high evening,
and something very like a forlorn compassion rose in his mind at
sight of their grave, rather pretentious, rather dull, respectable
faces.

He found himself walking with an affectation of effrontery, and
smiling with a faint contempt on all alike, as if to keep himself