On her way home Hal stopped the taxi and bought an evening paper. When she got it, however, she found Dudley there, so she merely held it under her cloak. “You are back early,” he said, in a surprised voice. “Yes. It was very formal and very dull, and I was tired.” He glanced up with questioning eyes. It was something new for Hal not to stay untill the last moment at a festivity. He thought she looked a little paler than usual, and there were shadows about her eyes, but she interrupted any comment he might make by an inquiry after Doris. “She is very well.” He stopped short rather suddenly, and seemed thoughtful. He had been urging Doris to fix the date of their wedding, and let him see about taking a house or a flat, but she had seemed to avoid the subject lately, and he was a little troubled. “I suppose poor Basil is much the same?” “Yes. He and Ethel were both asking what had become of you. They said you hadn’t been up for a long time.” “I haven’t. I’ll go tomorrow. Good-night,” and she kissed him, and went upstairs. In her own room she sat on the bed, and read the evening paper. Yes, it was there sure enough, but it was only given as a rumour. “We understand there is a rumour…” How well she knew the phrase, with its dangerous suggestiveness, and safe retreat. She wondered who had started the rumour, and how the paper had got it. But, again, insistently she asserted it could not be true. If it had not been for last Saturday she might have believed it. But after that… no, he could not be so base. She put the thought away from her, and tried to sleep, but her eyes would look out into the blackness, and her brain ask questions. “What if it were true?” She clenched her hands and fought the question. It could not be true; why worry? Yet he had never made the slightest suggestion of marrying her. She remembered that, but scorned it. Why should he? There had been nothing lover-like between them until the previous Saturday; and of course had there been any one else, it would have been so easy to go on the same and make no change that particular afternoon. Finding what comfort she could out of these thoughts, she fell at last into a troubled sleep. The following afternoon, in fulfilment of her promise, she went up to Holloway from the office. Doris was out, and Ethel not home yet, but the door was opened to her by a gaunt stranger, who said: “Come in. This is one of my days. I’m in charge this afternoon.” Hal looked into the angular face, which appeared to her as if it had been roughly hewn with a chisel, by some one who was a mere amateur, and she could not repress a little smile. “I don’t think I’ve met you before. Are you—are you—a friend of Mr. Hayward’s?” “Well, he’s a friend of mine, if that will do as well. I’m generally know here as G. The letter isn’t stamped on my face, but it’s on the door of my flat, and that’s much the same.”