He knew what he had come to talk to her about but he had really no clear idea of what her circumstances actually were. Most people had of course guessed that her husband had been living on the edge of his resources and was accustomed to debt and duns, but a lovely being greeting you by clasping your knees and talking about “starving”—in this particular street in Mayfair, led one to ask oneself what one was walking into. Feather herself had not known, in fact neither had any other human being known, that there was a special reason why he had drifted into seeming rather to allow her about—why he had finally been counted among the frequenters of the narrow house—and why he had seemed to watch her a good deal sometimes with an expression of serious interest—sometimes with an air of irritation, and sometimes with no expression at all. But there existed this reason and this it was and this alone which had caused him to appear upon her threshold and it had also been the power which had prevented his disengaging himself with more incisive finality when he found himself ridiculously clasped about the knees as one who played the part of an obdurate parent in a melodrama. Once in the familiar surroundings of her drawing-room her ash-gold blondness and her black gauzy frock heightened all her effects so extraordinarily that he frankly admitted to himself that she possessed assets which would have modified most things to most men. As for Feather, when she herself beheld him against the background of the same intimate aspects, the effect of the sound of his voice, the manner in which he sat down in a chair and a certain remotely dim hint in the hue of his clothes and an almost concealed note of some touch of colour which scarcely seemed to belong to anything worn—were so reminiscent of the days which now seemed past forever that she began to cry again. He received this with discreet lack of melodrama of tone. “You mustn’t do that, Mrs. Lawless,” he said, “or I shall burst into tears myself. I am a sensitive creature.” “Oh, _do_ say ‘Feather’ instead of Mrs. Lawless,” she implored. “Sometimes you said ‘Feather’.” “I will say it now,” he answered, “if you will not weep. It is an adorable name.” “I feel as if I should never hear it again,” she shuddered, trying to dry her eyes. “It is all over!” “What is all over?” “This—!” turning a hopeless gaze upon the two tiny rooms crowded with knick-knacks and nonsense. “The parties and the fun—and everything in the world! I have only had some biscuits and raisins to eat today—and the landlord is going to turn me out.” It seemed almost too preposterous to quite credit that she was uttering naked truth.—And yet—! After a second’s gaze at her he repeated what he had said below stairs. “Will you tell me exactly what you mean?”