His soft voice became a snarl and his lip curled unpleasantly back beneath the little silky moustache. “Of course I do.” “I don’t know how you dare, after all the encouragement you’ve given me.” She stared at him aghast. “Encouragement?” “Yes. Didn’t you make me dance attendance on you at Brighton? Haven’t you brought me here over and over again? You’ve behaved damnably to me. You’ve made me waste my time. I’ve turned other women who would have only been too glad——” In horror, she flew to the door and threw it open. “Go,” she said. And speeding across the hall she threw open the flat door. “Go,” she said again. She crossed the landing and rang the lift bell and returned to the hall, where he met her and threw himself on his knees and looked up at her with wild, hunted eyes. “Forgive me, Olivia. For God’s sake forgive me. I was mad. I didn’t know what I was saying. Shut that door and I’ll tell you everything.” But Olivia passed him by into the sitting-room, and stood with her back against the door until she heard the clash of the lift gates and the retreating footsteps of Bobby Quinton. A short while ago she had nearly quarrelled with Mauregard because, in a wordy dissertation on the modern young men who lived on women, he instanced Bobby as possibly coming within the category. Now she knew that Mauregard was right. She felt sick. Also deadly ashamed of her superior attitude of well-meant reprimand. She burned with the consciousness of tongue in cheek while he listened. Well, that was the end of the Lydian galley. She did not recover till the next afternoon, when Triona called to take her to the Blenkirons’ Sunday intellectual symposium in Fielder’s Park. She welcomed him impulsively with both hands outstretched, as a justification of her faith in mankind. “You can’t tell how glad I am to see you.” “And you,” said he, kissing first one hand and then the other, “can’t tell how good I think God is to me.” CHAPTER X HE brought great news. Not only had his publishers thought well of the novel and offered him good terms, including a substantial advance, but they professed themselves able to place it serially in England for a goodly sum. They had also shown him the figures of the half-yearly returns on American sales of _Through Blood and Snow_ which transcended his dreams of opulence. “I had forgotten America,” he said naïvely. “You’re nothing, if not original,” she laughed. “That’s what I like about you.” He insisted on the wild extravagance of a taxi to the garden city. All that money he declared had gone to his head. He felt the glorious intoxication of wealth. When they were about to turn off the safe highway into devious garden-city paths, he said: “Let us change our minds and go straight on to John o’ Groats.” “All right. Let us. We’re on the right road.” He swerved towards her. “Would you? Really?” She opened her bag and took out her purse.