Save for Ivor and the girl, the squalid bar was deserted. She paused in the act of replacing a bottle on the shelf behind her, and looked over her shoulder, half-surprised, half-contemptuous. A beam of afternoon sunlight slanted through the dusty panes and caught the greenish feline eyes and ruddy hair, innocent for once of curl-papers. "Wot? ... Me—kiss—yu!" She spoke slowly, and flung each word like a whip-lash at the soul of Ivor Jenkins. "Ah, yus, Bella—jest one. There ain’t——" "Mai dear laife! Yu ain’t ’arf got no neck!" She turned with her hands on her hips and regarded him with a smile on her thin lips, measuring his undersized stature with her eyes. "I only kisses men—yu don’ even drink laike no man, yu don’. ’Sides, wot’ve ’ee done for us tu kiss ’ee? Us laikes men wot does things, yu know." Ivor winced, but never took his smouldering eyes from the girl. "I’d do anything for you," he said tensely, "so I would," and coughed abruptly. She laughed and fell to wiping the sloppy counter. "Them as wants mai kisses earns un. Same’s Pete Worley: broke out of uns ship, un did, tu take I tu theatre. An’ w’en th’ escort commed tu fetch un back, Pete un laid un out laike nine-pins! Proper man, un was!" She surveyed Ivor, perched smoking on his stool, and a sudden gleam came into her eyes. "Yeer!—us knows of a kiss goin’ beggin’ tu-morrow afternoon." She leaned across the counter with a dangerous tenderness in her rather hoarse voice, "If so be as a man (she laid a slight intonation on the word) as’t leave tu go tu Dockyard Bank for’n hour, an’ slipped out, laike...." It was his watch on board, as she knew; but she had also noted the red Good Conduct Badge on his arm, and chose it instead of the accustomed tribute he had denied her. Then her eyes hardened like agates. "Simly yu ain’t got no money tu bank, though?" "Aye," said Ivor slowly; "aye, indeed I have. Three poun’." It was his sheet-anchor, saved (how Heaven and he alone knew) that his mother might eventually be buried with that circumstance which is dearer to the hearts of the Welsh than life itself. The girl nodded, and laid her hand caressingly on his sleeve. "Tha’s right, mai dear. Yu get leave tu go tu bank, an’ slip along ’ere. Tu-morrow afternoon ’bout five—will ’ee now?" She looked at him from beneath tawny lashes. Ivor finished his beer and wiped his mouth musingly on the back of his hand. The girl thought he was considering the Good Conduct Badge: as a matter of fact Ivor was wondering how the Police at the Dockyard Gate might be circumvented. "’Course," she said indifferently, turning away, "ef yu’m ’feered——" The man flushed darkly and stood up. "You’ll see," he replied, and went out through the swing-doors in a gust of coughing. It had been worrying him a good deal lately, that cough. *II.*