"I shall do nothing of the sort. How dare you suggest it? I suppose you think you're going to keep on behaving to me like this. My dear Sydney--you see, I call you by your Christian name, and it doesn't need much trying--my darling Sydney, my well-beloved Sydney--I'm going to be Mary Janeish--do you think I don't know what is going on inside you? You'd give--shall I say twopence?--to put out your hand and touch mine which is lying there upon the seat. You can see it, although you're not looking and you pretend you can't. Sydney, won't you touch it--just once?" "I won't." "Thank you; that is frank, and so sweet of you. You think you are as hard--oh, harder than that; and I believe that you have got much harder than you used to be, but when I've really made up my mind you shall, you'll melt and become--oh, yes, much softer than that. How far is Lavender Sweep? I don't seem to find it easy to get much out of you in this silly cab; perhaps I may have better fortune when we get to your wretched rooms. Is it much farther?" "Let's say all that there is to be said now. I wanted to say it before we got into the cab; it will only make it worse for both of us if we wait till we get to my rooms. You shan't go there. I won't have you." "Won't you? How are you going to stop me?" "By giving myself up to the next policeman we meet, if there is no other way; he'd think himself in luck to get me." "Sydney!" "It's the truth, and you know it. What's the good of either of us pretending that you don't?" "Will you please say nothing else until we reach your rooms? I won't, and I'd rather you didn't either. I'm going with you to your rooms, and nothing you can say or do will stop me. Now will you please be silent till we get to 97 Lavender Sweep? I think that, while we're in this cab, I prefer your silence to your conversation." She had her way; not a word was spoken on either side until the cab drew up in front of one of a long terrace of houses. CHAPTER XXXIII "Vi!" Miss Forster looked about the room into which he had ushered her, the first room on the right when you had come through the front door. It was the usual ground-floor front apartment of the £45 a year suburban "modern residence," a fair size, as a habitation for a "single gentleman," with a sufficiency of light, and air, and space. "If this is one of your 'wretched rooms,' I don't think it's very wretched, don't you know; it compares not at all unfavourably with my best parlour." Standing before the empty fireplace, he was observing her with singular intentness, brows knit, head bowed between his shoulders. "You understand where the money to pay for this palatial apartment has come from; how it has been--earned? You saw me engaged in the practice of my profession that night at Avonham." "Did I? Dear me! How terrible! Why should I mind?"