loved her little bare rooms, and if she were allowed to keep them and the happiness that filled them she asked no more. The brave independence: that was what René had prized in her, what was expressed in her room. He had contributed nothing to it but a little comfort, an easy chair, a few books, and his pleasure in her. He knew that she treasured that above everything in the world, and he must take it from her. He was shaken with cowardice and dread and pity--by pity most of all. That bound him to her, dragged him down. He had not expected it, so clear had everything seemed in the light of his healthful experience. And, he knew, pity from him would be to her of all things the most hateful. He could not shake free of it, and it absorbed him. He heard her footsteps on the short flight of stairs. He was filled with a longing to escape. With her hand on the door he lost his head and fled into the inner room. He heard her go to the fireplace and sit in the easy-chair. She sat silently brooding. Then she heard him in the inner room. She had heard that before, and he was never there. Slowly she came into the inner room, and he could just see her smoothing the pillows with her hands. She caught the sound of his breathing and stood stock-still. He could not move. She came toward him groping with her hands. She touched him. "Renny, dear." She was pressed close to him. Her arms went round his neck. "I knew you'd come back." He caressed her soothingly, gently, consumed and burning in his pity for her, and his terror lest she should discover it too suddenly. He tried to draw her into the outer room, but she clung to him and kept him in the darkness, forcing him to feel her animal possession of him and hunger for him. Rage and the desire for self-preservation thrust back his pity and he carried her back to the outer room. Then it was some moments before she could recover herself. She stood giggling and laughing nervously, almost hysterically. "Renny, dear," she said, "you did say once we'd go off together. I want to. I want to. I'm sorry I went on working. I oughtn't to have done that. We ought to have had a house and me looking after it." "You would have been even more unhappy." "I'm not unhappy, Renny, dear. You've come back. And there's that coming----" ("She must be kept off that," he thought.) "Old Martin's been that kind," she said. "He says he'll see us through if it's money." "I can make enough money," he replied, and then stopped, puzzled and startled by the malicious pleasure that came into her eyes. He leaned forward the better to see her, for the gas jet was flickering, and she turned away with a half smile that was exasperatingly silly. "It isn't money," he said, "and you know it. I've seen Kilner." She was instantly defiant on that. "Well, and what had he to say for himself?" "Nothing you would understand." "Heuh! Clever, aren't you, you two, when you get your heads together."