"Wretch! do you lecture me because I couldn't find a tenant for the Victoria Street place? He blames me for my misfortunes!" She caught the long gloves up, and swirled them round on his cheek. Like the others, they were perfumed; but now their scent was in his face. They looked in each other's eyes an instant, smiling across the corner of the table. Then, as the smile died away, they remained looking in each other's eyes attentively. He drew the gloves from her hold, and played with them. Her hand lay upturned to take them back, and in restoring them his own rested on it. She averted her gaze, but her palm did not slip away so quickly as it might have done. "You know you may smoke," she said, rising and going over to the fire. "I'll have one, too." "Isn't it too late?" he asked, joining her. His voice was not quite steady, and now he didn't look at her as he spoke. "You can have one cigarette," she said, sinking into an armchair, and crossing her feet on the fender. "How's the paper going? Eclipsing _Le Petit Journal_?" "Of course," he said. "Did you ever know anybody's paper that wasn't?" "You count Paris your home, I suppose? You mean to stop here permanently? _I_ go back in March; the people are returning here then. I loathe London after Paris, but I shall have escaped most of the winter there, that's one thing. Where did you live in town?" "_My_ neighbourhood _was_ Battersea, that is to say, it was suburban wilds. We had a villa at Streatham--have it now, in fact," he added, remembering with dismay that there was a quarter's rent due. "No, I'm afraid I can't condole with you, Mrs. Deane-Pitt." "'Pride sleeps in a gilded crown, contentment in a cotton night-cap,'" she said. "An address is only skin-deep, after all; besides, Streatham is pretty." "Pretty _well_. And it looks prettier out of a big house." "Get money, my friend," she said languidly; "you are young enough, and I think you're clever enough. When all things were made, nothing was made better. And it's really very easy; as soon as you are popular, the editors will take anything." "'First catch your hare,'" he observed. "I'm not popular." The clock on the mantelshelf struck one, and he threw away his cigarette-end and got up. "Good-night, Mrs. Deane-Pitt." "Good-night," she said.