calamities, the sevenfold death'. Arthur Welsh's was all that and a bit
over. It was a constant shadow on Maud's happiness. No fair-minded girl
objects to a certain tinge of jealousy. Kept within proper bounds, it
is a compliment; it makes for piquancy; it is the gin in the
ginger-beer of devotion. But it should be a condiment, not a fluid.

It was the unfairness of the thing which hurt Maud. Her conscience was
clear. She knew girls--several girls--who gave the young men with whom
they walked out ample excuse for being perfect Othellos. If she had
ever flirted on the open beach with the baritone of the troupe of
pierrots, like Jane Oddy, she could have excused Arthur's attitude. If,
like Pauline Dicey, she had roller-skated for a solid hour with a
black-moustached stranger while her fiance floundered in Mug's Alley
she could have understood his frowning disapprovingly. But she was not
like Pauline. She scorned the coquetries of Jane. Arthur was the centre
of her world, and he knew it. Ever since the rainy evening when he had
sheltered her under his umbrella to her Tube station, he had known
perfectly well how things were with her. And yet just because, in a
strictly business-like way, she was civil to her customers, he must
scowl and bite his lip and behave generally as if it had been brought
to his notice that he had been nurturing a serpent in his bosom. It was
worse than wicked--it was unprofessional.

She remonstrated with him.

'It isn't fair,' she said, one morning when the rush of customers had
ceased and they had the shop to themselves.

Matters had been worse than usual that morning. After days of rain and
greyness the weather had turned over a new leaf. The sun glinted among