As he walked through the streets once more, he felt that this was the last straw. Why had he not made her understand herself? Why had he not carried her off then and there to Avilion? Truly, he was cursed as a fool. He ought to have known, he ought to have guessed, he ought to have understood. So, as he wandered aimlessly through the city, looking with a lack-lustre eye upon all its hideous sights and sounds, having in his ears the silly giggles of girls as they crowded round the shop windows, having in his eyes an endless procession in those windows, of hats and garments, and flowers and frocks, and fal-lals set there by men as a bait to the only barter which is allowed to womanhood without restraint, he told himself that he would have done right if he had carried her away from contamination to that island in the southern seas, where she would have lived to rear his children and be.... Ye Gods! What should she not have been? For an instant he caught a glimpse of reality, and then the Dream of Life was his again; but though the Dancer of the World had on all the charms of money and civilisation and culture, her dancing did not hold his eyes. That evening he went over to the hospital and found Helen, darning away busily at something which she hastily thrust into her work-basket as he came in. Vested interests, of course! "I am going away, Helen," he said. "Going away," she echoed. "Why, Ned! you have only just come back. My dear! I do wish you--you would settle down." "That was exactly what I came to say to you," he replied. "Helen! why won't you marry Ramsay? You--you are not likely to find a better fellow, or one whom--you like better. Why not marry him, instead of darning his underclothes on the sly?" He pointed to the workbasket. "My duty as a matron," she began, flushing gloriously. "That will be cold comfort by--and--by," he replied kindly. "Your duty as _mater_ would be more satisfying." Helen held her breath for a moment, then it exhaled in a little childless sigh. "That is true, Ned," she said quietly, "but when a woman knows what Love is, she cannot give herself without it. And Love comes but once to a woman; at any rate it will only come once to me." "I wonder," said Ned reflectively, "what womanhood would be like if one were to pound down every one who possessed it in a mortar and fashioned them afresh. Well! I am off--for six months." "Where?" "I will say India this time," he replied cheerfully. "Then my letters can be forwarded to Algiers--but----" this he added, seeing her remonstrant face--"I will leave my address with my agents, so you can write through them if anything is wanted--but it won't be wanted. The world gets on as well without me, as I get on without the world." He went round afterwards to the secretary's office. "How much capital do you think they would require to run that factory on co-operative lines?" he asked. Woods shook his head.