Mrs. Durlacher picked up her skirts, the silk rustling like leaves in an autumn wind. As she lowered her head in the movement, the dilation of her nostrils repressed a smile of satisfaction. "You mustn't let my going force you away," she said graciously. "Oh, but I must go," said Sally. Traill shrugged his shoulders. Let her have her way. When women are doing things for apparently no reason, they are the most obstinate. But at the door of the room as his sister passed out first, he caught Sally's elbow in a tense grip and for the instant held her back. "I shall wait here for you for half an hour," he whispered. CHAPTER XXII "Is there anywhere that I can take you, Miss Bishop?" Mrs. Durlacher offered, as they stood by the side of the shivering taxi. "I'm going out to Sloane Street." "Oh no, thank you; it's very good of you. I'm going to catch a train at Waterloo." She shook hands, then held out her hand quietly to Traill. "Good-bye, Mr. Traill." He took her hand and held it with meaning. "Good-bye." She turned away and walked down Waterloo Place, her head erect, her steps firm, but the tears rolling from her eyes, and her breast lifting with every sob that she stifled in her throat. Mrs. Durlacher looked after her; then her eyes swept up to her brother's face. "Is she going to walk all the way to Waterloo Station?" she asked incredulously. "Expect so." Mrs. Durlacher looked above her in a perfect simulation of amazement. Then she stepped into the cab. "Jack," she said, when she was seated. "What?" She prefaced her words with a little laugh. "I wouldn't be a little milliner at your mercy for all I could see." Traill snorted contemptuously. "She's not a little milliner," he said, cutting each word clean with irony. "Neither in your sense, nor in reality. Fortune has cursed her with being a lady and withheld the necessary increment that would make such things obvious to you. Good night." He stood away, and told the chauffeur the address in Sloane Street. They did not look at each other again, and the little vehicle pulled away from the kerbstone without the final nod of the head or shaking of the hand which usually terminated their meetings. The last sight she had of him, was as he stood looking down Waterloo Place, his eyes picking out the people one by one, as the miner sifts the dross from the dust of gold. Then she leant back in the cab and a low, sententious laugh lazily parted her lips. For a moment, Traill stood there; but Sally was out of sight. It crossed his mind to run down into Pall Mall--coatless, hatless, as he was--in the hope of finding her; but an inner consciousness convinced him that she would return, and he walked back into the house, upstairs to his room to wait for her.