“But in the meantime,” urged Mr. Candover gently, “even though you don’t feel that life is worth living, you must live, you know. And the best way to please Gerard is to keep in good health and in good spirits. I don’t mean uproariously high spirits, but the natural ones of youth and beauty. May I ask where you’re going now?” She hesitated. “I’m going to try to sublet the flat,” she answered unwillingly at last. For she still felt aggrieved at his defection, as she considered it, at the fact that, when a powerful friend like himself might have done much to support Gerard and to create a favourable impression by standing up for him boldly, Mr. Candover, who had professed so much affection for them both, should have remained silent and aloof. “Won’t you let me do the business for you? A man is less likely to be taken advantage of than a woman, you know.” “Thank you, I would rather arrange it all myself. It gives me something to do.” “May I come round to-morrow and bring you some books?” “Thank you, I have no time for reading now.” “If I were to come, then, should I be told you were out, as I was told just now?” persisted he. “I--I think so. I leave the same message for all my friends. If they were to persist in seeing me, I should have to go away. Really I should have thought you might understand, Mr. Candover, how very, very retired a life I must live now.” It was very neatly worded, but Mr. Candover understood. Audrey had to be discreet; she was a good and true woman, and the enjoyments which she had loved, the gaieties in which she had taken a foremost and brilliant part with her young husband by her side to share them, were now to be put away, forgotten, to give place to the austerity of the widowhood she professed to have entered. The man of the world was nonplussed. Give up the chase he would not; but before this inflexible determination he was powerless. At last a bright thought struck him:-- “If I were to bring my two girls up, now, would you see them? They are hardly more than children, and are still at school. But I should like you to know them. And I should like them to know _you_, to have before them the example of a noble woman and a devoted wife.” Audrey was conquered. She could hardly refuse such a request as this. “I should be very happy to see them,” she said gently. “But wait, oh, do please wait a little. To see two happy girls now--would--would----” The tears were so near that she had to collect herself--“would be more than I could bear,” she ended in a whisper. A week later, therefore, Mr. Candover called at the flat one afternoon, bringing with him two shy schoolgirls, still in the awkward stage between childhood and womanhood, though the elder was a tall, well-developed girl whose hair had just been “put up” to celebrate her eighteenth birthday. She was a bright-faced girl, this Pamela, with irregular features, little twinkling, merry dark eyes, and manners half-shy, half-hoydenish, but rather sweet.