Leslie Morrison instantly and loyally followed her lead. “If Elsie is kind enough to let me be her friend, and--and take her out every now and then, and that sort of thing, I’m willing to forget what’s just passed, and simply ask you as man to man if you’ve any objection to us being, as she says, just pals,” he said steadily enough. “I have every objection. You young fool, Elsie has just said in so many words that she’s in love with you. Did you mean that, Elsie, or did you not?” Elsie sobbed more and more violently, and her voice rose to an incoherent screech. “How do I know what I mean or don’t mean, when you make a row like this? But I’ll tell you this much, anyway, it’s true what he said; I’m wretched with you, and if you were half a man, you’d set me free.” “There, that’s enough,” said Williams. “Going round and round in a circle won’t help any of us, and you ought to know by this time, Elsie, that I always mean what I say. You’ll please to remember what you were when I married you--a little fool of a typist, without a penny, whose mother kept a boarding-house and was only too glad of the money I gave her. It doesn’t take a genius to say what would have happened to you if you hadn’t found a man fool enough to marry you, either.” “Stop that!” Morrison shouted. The solicitor blinked at him quietly. “I’ve twice told you to get out of my house,” he observed. “Don’t make me say it a third time. It’ll be the worse, if you do--for Elsie.” “Are you threatening her, you--you brute, you?” “I object to your friendship with my wife. That’s all--and enough too. Now go.” “Oh yes, go!” said Elsie suddenly, breaking into renewed sobs and tears. “I can’t stand this. You’d better go, Leslie boy, really you had. I shall do myself in, that’s all.” “Don’t talk like that----” the youth began frantically, but Williams opened the door, and stood silently pointing to it. There was something strangely inexorable in his little, trivial figure and sinister, passionless expression. “Elsie,” said Morrison brokenly, “if ever you want me, send for me. I’ll come!” He went out of the room, and they heard him go down the stairs and let himself out at the front door. “That’s the end of that,” said Williams in a quiet, satisfied voice. “Stop that howling, Elsie. You didn’t really suppose that I didn’t know what was going on?” She sobbed and would not answer. There was a long silence, and at last Elsie, face downwards on the sofa, began to feel frightened and curious. She bore it as long as she could, and then looked up. Her husband was gazing out of the window, in which a potted aspidistra stood upon a wicker stand between soiled white curtains. At the slight movement that she made he turned his head. “Elsie, tell me. Did you really mean what you said, that you’re in love with that boy?” To her incredulous surprise, his voice had become hoarse and almost maudlin. “You only said it to make me angry, didn’t you?”