'I'm sure he hasn't kissed anyone since he knew you. I can't put it plainer than that, can I?' 'I'm glad to hear you say so. I don't think you'd tell me a lie; it would be too cruel, wouldn't it? For you know what a position I am in: if Dick were to desert me to-morrow what should I do?' 'You're in a mournful humour. Why should Dick desert you? And even if he did, I don't see that it would be such an awful fate.' Startled, Kate raised her eyes suddenly and looked him straight in the face. 'What do you mean?' she said. The abruptness of her question made him hesitate. In a swift instant he regretted having risked himself so far, and reproached himself for being false to his friend; but the temptation was irresistible, and overcome by the tenderness of the day, and irritated by the memory of years of vain longing, he said: 'Even if he did desert you, you might, you would, find somebody better--somebody who'd marry you.' Kate did not answer and they sat listening to the rattle of the train. At last she said: 'I could never marry anyone but Dick.' 'Why? Do you love him so much?' 'Yes, I love him better than anything in the world; but even if I didn't, there are reasons which would prevent my marrying anyone but him.' 'What reasons?' A desire that someone should know of her trouble smothered all other considerations, and after another attempt to speak she again dropped into silence. Montgomery tried to rouse her: 'Tell me,' he said, 'tell me why you couldn't marry anyone but Dick.' The sound of his voice startled her, and then, in a moment of sudden naturalness, she answered: 'Because I'm in the family way.' 'Then there's nothing else for him to do but to marry you.' She knew he was at that moment his own proper executioner, but the intensity of her own feelings did not leave her time for pity. Why after all shouldn't she marry Dick? Why hadn't she asked for this reparation before? 'I dare say you're right,' she said. 'When I tell him----' 'What! haven't you told him yet?' Montgomery cried. 'No,' Kate answered timidly, 'I was afraid he wouldn't care to hear it.' 'Then you must do so at once,' Montgomery said, and the poor vagrant musician, whom nobody had ever loved, said: 'I will speak to him about it the first time I get a chance. It would be wicked of him not to. He couldn't refuse even if he didn't love you, which he does.' The last streak of yellow had died out of the sky telling of the day that had gone by, and in a deep tranquillity of mind Kate inhaled the sweetness of her luck as a convalescent might a bunch of freshly culled violets. XVIII It never rains but it pours. She was called before the curtain after every act in _Madame Angot_ and _Les Cloches de Corneville_, and Dick told her that she would cut out all the London prima donnas, giving them the go-by, and establish herself one of the great Metropolitan favourites if he could get a new work over from France.