She thought over Lionel with a passionate desire to do right; tried to obtain guidance from her brain while her heart was dumb. She wondered whether it did him more good to see how seriously she regarded his offence, or whether it would have helped him more to forgive him. Never considered it simply as a matter of cruelty or kindness. She was so concerned with thinking of what was morally best for Lionel that she neglected her own soul’s good. And without doubt her soul suffered. She was becoming irritable, intolerant, over-haughty, wrapped up in her own affairs. She needed Lionel badly, needed his carelessness, his sweet temper. In spite of that, she thought she was “getting over” it splendidly; being sensible, and so on. She was able to eat and to sleep and to live as usual; even looked the same. And then, suddenly, one night, woke up with a piercing pain, a most irresistible tenderness and longing for him. “How could I have been so heartless!” she asked herself, sitting up in bed, and clasping her hands hysterically. “What did it matter, what he did? What do I care about that? Lionel! Darling! I want you back so!” She got up then and there and wrote to him, addressing it in care of Horace. V He came the next evening. Quite in accordance with his extreme character he had in ten days’ time become unnecessarily wretched and shabby in looks and manners. He was even thinner. He had looked and looked for a job, he said, but no one would have an inexperienced man of his age. He was in despair. So that Frances could not for an instant maintain her injured majesty, but had to comfort and fortify him, even to cry over him a little. “Don’t be discouraged!” she entreated, stroking his hair. “Poor old boy!” “But I haven’t a penny! I used that money in the bank. I’ve moved into a cheap boarding-house. But still I can’t manage. And my remittance doesn’t come until January.” Followed an extraordinary period for the lovers. Lionel pawned his watch, his travelling-bag, his cuff-buttons, one thing after another. He would get down to his last dollar and come to Frankie, white with despair, and she would think of something else to do. He would come back from each of these visits to the pawn-shop jubilant and pleading for a “celebration,” but Frankie never permitted it. He put everything into her hands without reserve, and received back what she allowed him, unquestioningly. They frequented cinemas instead of theatres; he found a cheaper brand of cigarettes. He did it all, too, with such generosity and simplicity that Frankie was utterly enslaved. He was her child, her ewe lamb, she watched over him, planned for him, guided him, with passionate devotion.