Wog didn't know what this might mean. She regarded it as one more attempt, on the part of the married man who ought never to have had any connection with Rita. She realised that Lothian must be absolutely ignorant of Rita's marriage. And, knowing nothing of Mary Lothian's death, she regarded the telegram with disgust and fear. "How dreadful," she thought, in her virgin mind, untroubled always by the lusts of the flesh and the desire of the eyes, "that this great man should run after Cupid. He's got his own wife. How angry Father would be if he knew. And yet, Mr. Lothian couldn't help loving Cupid, I suppose. Every one loves her." "I must be as kind as I can to him when he comes," she said to herself. "He ought to be here almost at once. Of course, Cupid knows nothing about the telegram saying that he's coming. I can give her letter into his own hands." . . . The bell whirred--ring, ring, ring--was there not something exultant in the shrill purring of the bell? Wog looked round the littered room, saw the letter on the mantel, the spread telegram upon the table, breathed heavily and went out into the little hall-passage of the flat. "Click," and she opened the door. Standing there, wearing a fur coat and a felt hat, was some one she had never met, but whom she knew in an instant. It was Gilbert Lothian. Yet it was not the Gilbert Lothian she had imagined from his photograph. Still less the poet of Rita's confidences and the verses of "Surgit Amari." He looked like a well-dressed doll, just come there, like a quite _convenable_ but rather unreal figure from Madame Tussaud's! He looked at her for a quick moment and then held out his hand. "I know," he said; "you're Wog! I've heard such a lot about you. Where's Rita? May I come in?--she got my wire?" . . . He was in the little hall before she had time to answer him. Mechanically she led the way into the sitting-room. In the full electric light she saw him clearly for the first time. Ethel Harrison shuddered. She saw a large, white face, with pinkish blotches on it here and there--more particularly at the corners of the mouth and about the nostrils. The face had an impression of immense _power_--of _concentration_. Beneath the wavy hair and the straight eyebrows, the eyes gleamed and shot out fire--shifting this way and that. With an extraordinary quickness and comprehension these eyes glanced round the flat and took in its disorder. . . . "She got my wire?" the man said--finding the spread-out pink paper upon the table in an instant. "No, Mr. Lothian," Ethel Harrison said gravely. "Rita never got your wire. It came too late."