"You have been so kind, and I have been so much interested. But I must go now!" she said, like a weary child pleading to be let out of school. "Franky—my husband—will be waiting. I have promised to lunch with him at the Club." "If he is here, perhaps Lord Norwater would like to speak to me," Saxham suggested. Margot lied badly. She reddened as she answered: "Oh, what a pity that he did not come!" *CHAPTER XXII* *MARGOT IS SQUARE* She was in what she would have termed "a blue funk" for fear that Saxham would accompany her to the threshold. But he merely bowed her out of the consulting-room and smartly shut his door. Then she tripped to the waiting-room and beckoned forth Franky with an air of buoyant, fictitious cheerfulness. Her eyes were radiant, her little face was dressed in artful smiles.... "Did I seem long? Were you getting the hump?" she asked of Franky, who rose and hurried to meet her, dropping _Punches_ all over the place. His smooth hair was almost rumpled and his brown eyes begged like a retriever’s. He asked in the kind of whisper that travels miles: "Yes—no! Did you pull off the interview? What does the Doctor——" "S-sh!" She glanced anxiously towards the one remaining patient. "Tell you when we get out. Impossible here!" He urged: "But is it all right?" "As right as rain!" "Good egg!" She had got him out of the room and as far as the hall door. "Stop! ... Wait! Oughtn’t I to go and thank——" "No—no!" The door was open, the neat little landau-limousine that had brought them was waiting by the kerb-stone. Before Franky knew it, Margot had plucked him down the steps, pulled him into the car, and given the chauffeur the signal. They were in Hanover Square before he recovered his breath. "Oh come, I say, Kittums! That sort of Sandow business can’t be good for you. Why you’re in such a thundering hurry to get me away, I’d rather like to know?" Her heart shook her, but she lied again bravely. "Didn’t you want to hear what the Doctor told me about the ’Purple Dreams’ treatment?" "More than anything in the world. That drug with the freak name! ... Can it do any harm—to you and——" "Not a scrap!" She planted a flying kiss between his ear and his collar. He greatly appreciated the attention, though it tickled him horribly. "Dr. Saxham said it was a frightfully clever, practicable method. Absolutely harmless, and the patient doesn’t suffer—not that much!" She measured off an infinitesimal bit of finger-nail and showed him, and went on as he caught the little hand and gratefully mumbled it: "You don’t know a thing that happens. You simply go to bye-bye. And—there’s always the baby when you wake up!"