"Don't stand still in that theatrical way," she commanded. "Everybody's looking at you." The kidney-stones of the Leicester streets had been hurting her feet, and she was in no mood for mercy. "So this is the end," fluted David Bligh, with such emotion that the top note narrowly escaped being falsetto. "After all these weeks you're going to throw me away like an old chocolate-box." He swished his cane with such demonstrative violence that, without seeing what he was doing, he cut a passer-by hard on the knuckle and thereby provoked a scene of humble apologies that made Dorothy more furious than ever. "At least you might not make me look a fool in a public thoroughfare," she told him. "I'm awfully sorry, Dolly. I didn't know what I was doing for the moment." "Don't call me Dolly," she said. "You know how I hate abbreviations." "I don't seem to be able to do anything right this morning." "Look at the ridiculous walk you've brought me! Nothing but cobble-stones, and passers-by bumping into one, and now we're getting down among the factories. You know how I hate being stared at." "You didn't mind being stared at in Nottingham the week before last." "Oh God! aren't you impossible!" cried Dorothy, herself now dramatically turning right round and leaving him undecided whether to follow her or retire in the opposite direction. Half a dozen factory-girls, arm in arm, who, with the horrible quickness of their class for anything that causes discomfort to other people, had noticed the quarrel, began to shout after Dorothy that her little boy was crying for his mother; while she, in torments of rage and humiliation, and of hatred for the man who was the cause of them, hurried uphill toward a more civilized quarter of the town. Five minutes later the tenor overtook Dorothy and begged pardon for losing her like that; he explained that, having got involved in a crowd of factory-girls, he could not hurry without making himself more ridiculous. "You don't mind making me ridiculous," she said, bitterly. "My dear girl, it was you that turned away, not me." "Oh, go to the devil!" she burst out. "I'll have nothing more to do with you. You can console yourself with May Seymour." The people who turned to stare after the lovely girl that seemed an incarnation of this blue-and-white April day might have been as shocked as Dorothy was at herself to think that she had just descended to the level of an actor by telling him to go to the devil. III