For Landon, the amusement of baiting the other man's evident misery soon palled. He was a little annoyed himself that Joan should have seen fit to drag him in as such a cat's-paw, for a very few minutes of their threesome had shown him what his part was intended to be. It meant in addition that the girl had fooled him, and that he had wasted his background of red roses. It was all very annoying and a very stupid way of spending the afternoon, for no one could imagine that there was any amusement to be got out of a bad tea in squalid surroundings--thus mercilessly but almost truthfully did he dismiss the atmosphere of Joan's attic--with a girl palpably in love with someone else. Landon rose presently with his most languid air of boredom. "Sorry, Pierrette," he said; "must fly, but I leave my roses behind me as a memory. They are not what I should call my lucky flower." He turned to Dick, who stood up with a grim face and stern-set mouth. "Good-bye, Doctor Grant; delighted to have met you: if Pierrette feels like it, get her to tell you about our last venture into the rose world. Romantic tale, isn't it, Pierrette?" He laughed, lifting her hand to his heart very impressively. "But ours has always been a romance, hasn't it? That is why we christened each other Pierrot and Pierrette." He let go her hand and bowed gravely. Joan followed him to the door. "I'll come and see you out," she said; she had not realized until the moment came how horribly afraid she was of Dick. "You might lose your way." "Oh no," Landon assured her; he shot one last slightly vindictive glance at Dick; "I know it by heart." Then he laughed and went from the room, shutting the door behind him. Joan stayed where she was, a seeming weight on her lids, which prevented her lifting her eyes to look at Dick. But she was intensely conscious of him, and round her heart something had closed like a band of iron. At last, since he said nothing and made no sign, she moved forward blindly and sat down in the nearest chair. "Aren't you ever going to speak again?" she whispered. Her words shook Dick out of his silent self-restraint. Hot anger, passionate reproaches, fought for speech in his throat; he drove them back.