'Yes, the rehearsal of her opera and Montgomery's music. I did think he was my friend; yet he is putting up her opera to music, and all the while he was setting it you were telling me lies about _Chilpéric_, saying that I was to play the Fredegonde, and all the principal parts in the great Hervé festival, that the American--but there was no American. It was cruel of you, Dick, to shut me up here with nobody to speak to; nothing to do but to wait for you hour after hour, and when you come home to hear nothing from you but lies, nothing but lies! _Chilpéric, Le Petit Faust, L'Oeil Créve, Trône d'Écosse, Marguerite de Navarre, La Belle Poule_. And all the music I've learnt hoping that I would be allowed to sing it; and yet you expect that a woman who is deceived like that can abstain from drink. Why, you drive me to it, Dick. An angel from heaven wouldn't abstain from drink. Away you go in the morning to Mrs. Forest--to her opera.' 'But, Kate, there's nothing between me and Mrs. Forest. She is a very clever woman, and I am doing her opera for her. How are we to live if you come between me and my business?' 'Womanizing is your business,' Kate answered suddenly. 'Well, don't let us argue it,' Dick answered. He tied his shoe-strings and sought for his hat. 'So you're going,' she said; 'and when shall I see you again?' 'I shall try to get home for dinner.' 'What time?' 'Not before eight.' 'I shall not see you before twelve,' she replied, and she experienced a sad sinking of the heart when she heard the door close behind him, a sad sinking that she would have to endure till she heard his latchkey, and that would not be for many hours, perhaps not till midnight. She did not know how she would be able to endure all these hours; to sleep some of them away would be the best thing she could do, and with that intention she drew down the blind and threw herself on the bed, and lay between sleeping and waking till the afternoon. Then, feeling a little better, she rang and asked for a cup of tea. It tasted very insipid, but she gulped it down as best she could, making wry faces and feeling more miserable than ever she had felt before; afraid to look back on yesterday, afraid to look forward on the morrow, she bethought herself of the past, of the happy days when Montgomery used to come and teach her to sing, and her triumphs in the part of Clairette; she was quite as successful in Serpolette; people had liked her in Serpolette, and to recall those days more distinctly she opened a box in which she kept her souvenirs: a withered flower, a broken cigarette-holder, two or three old buttons that had fallen from his clothes, and a lock of hair, and it was under these that the prize of prizes lay--a string of false pearls. She liked to run them through her fingers and to see them upon her neck. She still kept the dresses she wore in her two favourite parts, the stockings and the shoes, and having nothing