Irene listened, sitting on the kitchen table, her shrewd, cynical gaze fixed upon Elsie. “You’re for it, all right,” she observed dryly. “I thought directly I saw you after you’d got back from Torquay that there was something up. But I somehow didn’t think you’d go off the deep end like that, Elsie. Why, you’re dotty about him!” “Yes,” said Elsie, “I am.” “And what do you suppose is going to happen?” Elsie groaned. “I wish to the Lord that Horace would do the decent thing, or go West--and let me have a chance of happiness.” “He won’t,” said Irene. “Well, whatever you do, don’t make a fool of yourself and run off with this fellow. It simply isn’t worth it, when he hasn’t got a penny, and not very often when he has.” “If I thought Horace would divorce me it’d be different,” Elsie said. She was not listening to Irene at all. “Though even then, I don’t know what we would live on. Leslie hasn’t anything except his salary, and that’s tiny, and I’m sure I couldn’t earn a penny if I tried. Mother wouldn’t help me, either, if I did a thing like that.” “No more would anybody else. And surely to goodness, Elsie, you’d never be such a fool. Think what it would mean to be disgraced, and have a scandal.” “I wouldn’t mind that with him.” Irene groaned. “You are far gone! Well, the worse it is while it lasts, the sooner it’s over. You’ll see sense again one of these days, I suppose. Meanwhile, you’d better ’phone that husband of yours.” Elsie’s conversation with Williams over the telephone was brief. She agreed to come home at midday, and neither made any reference to the visit of Williams at eleven o’clock on the previous night. Elsie anticipated a scene with her husband, and felt indifferent to the prospect. She had not enough imagination to work herself up in advance, and, moreover, her faculties were entirely occupied with the blissful expectation of seeing Morrison again that afternoon. He came some hours after she had arrived home. Elsie had done some shopping in the morning. With her husband’s money she had bought a gold-nibbed fountain-pen for Leslie, and had paid for copies of a photograph of herself. She had scarcely ever in her life before given anyone a present, and Leslie Morrison’s ardent thanks, and rapture over the photograph, caused her the most acute pleasure. “Darling, it’s lovely, and it’s just you! I shall always carry it about with me, done up with your dear letters.” “Don’t keep my letters, Leslie,” said Elsie suddenly. “Why ever not?” A sudden recollection had come to her ... “_Beware of the written word...._” The medium to whom Irene had once taken her had said that. She had also said other things; had told Elsie that love would come to her.... Perhaps she really knew.... “I’d rather you didn’t, really,” she said feebly. “Suppose--suppose Horace ever got hold of them----”