For Lorraine it meant a hideous memory, a hideous, overwhelming catastrophe, and a hideous tie from which she could not hope to free herself. She went away in a state of nervous prostration that was an illness, feeling the horror of it all in her very bones, and clinging with a silent hopelessness to Hal in a way that was more heart-rending than any hysterical outburst. Yet that Hal was there was good indeed. Hal, who, though only twenty-one, could look out on an ugly world with those clear eyes of hers, and while seeing the ugliness undisguised, see always as it were beside it the ultimate good, the ultimate hope, the silver lining behind the blackest cloud. Hal, who could criticise unerringly, with direct, outspoken humour,and yet scorn to judge; who had learnt, by some strange instinct, the precious art of holding out a friendly hand and generous friendship, even to those condemned of the orthodox, sufferers probably through their own wild and foolish actions, without in any way becoming besmirched herself, or losing her own inherent freshness and purity. It was not in the least surprising that a man as wedded to his books and profession as Dudley should fail to realise what was, in a measure, phenomenal. By the simple rule of A B C, he argued that ill necessarily contaminates, if the one to come in contact is of young and impressionable years. There might of course be exceptions, but hardly among those as frivolous and obstinate as Hal. He worried himself almost ill about it all, until Lorraine was safely out of England, adding seriously to poor Hal’s troubled mind, seeing she must stand by the one while longing to soothe and please the other, and fretting silently over his anxious expression. But once back in their old groove, he quickly recovered his spirits, and even tried to make up to Hal a little for what she had lost. Unfortunately, however, he hit upon an unhappy expedient. He tried to persuade her to make a friend of a certain Doris Hayward, instead of Lorraine. Doris’s brother had been Dudley’s great friend in the days when both were articled to the same profession, but a terrible accident had later lain him on an invalid couch for the rest of his life. When clerk of the works of one of London’s great buildings, a heavy crane had slipped and swung sideways, flinging him into the street below. He was picked up and carried into the nearest hospital, apparently dead, but he had presently come back, almost from the grave, to drag out a weary life as an incurable on an invalid sofa. Soon afterwards his father died, leaving Basil and his two sisters the poor pittance of £50 a year between them. Ethel, the elder, was already a Civil Service clerk at the General Post Office, earning £110 a year, and on these two sums they had to subsist as best they could.