"I was scared to walk about the streets all night in these things. I always was more afraid of that than anything. Though _he_ never would believe me when I said so. You don't know the names he called me. So I took a taxi and I went to the first hotel I could think of--the Thackeray. But I hadn't enough money with me, and they wouldn't take me in. Then I went and sat in the waiting-room at Euston Station till they closed. Then I sat outside on the platform and pretended to be waitin' for a train. _He_ wouldn't believe me if I told him I'd spent the night in that station. But I did. And I got me death of cold. And in the morning me cough started, and they wouldn't take me in any of the shops because of it. "I tried all morning. Starker's first. Then in the afternoon I went to Father, and he wouldn't have me. He won't believe I haven't been bad, because of me things and me cough. I suppose he thinks I've got consumption or something. He saw me coming in at the gate and he turned me out straight. I didn't even get to the door." "He couldn't--" "He did--reelly, Ranny, he did. He said he'd washed his hands of me and I could go back to you. He said--No, I can't tell you what he said." There was no need to tell. He knew. She looked at him now, straight, for the first time. "Ranny--he knows. He knows what we did." "Did you tell him?" "Not me! He'd guessed it. He'd guessed it all the time. Trust _him_. And he taxed me with it. And I lied. I wasn't goin' to have him thinkin' _that_ of you." "Of _me_?" "Yes--_you_." It was her first flash of feeling since she began her tale. "It doesn't matter what he thinks of me. I told him so." "Well? Then?" "Then I started lookin' for work again. Couldn't get any. Then I came here. If you turn me out there'll be nothing but the streets. If I was to get work nobody'll keep me. I haven't properly got over that illness. I'm so weak I couldn't stand to do anything long. There are times when I can hardly hold myself together." And still there was no feeling in her voice, and barely the suggestion of appeal; only the flat tones of the last extremity. "I've come here because I'm afraid of going to the bad. I don't want to be bad--not reelly bad. But I'll be driven to it if you turn me out." It might have been a threat she held out to him but that her voice lacked the passion of all menace. Passion could not have served her better than her dull, unvibrating statement of the fact. "If you won't take me back--" Her spent voice dropped dead on the last word and her cough broke out again. Ransome's next movement averted it. She revived suddenly. "Ranny--are you going for that cab?" He turned. "No," he said. "You know I'm not." "Then, what are you thinking of?" * * * * *