"You--you---- I'm afraid," said René chokingly, "I'm afraid you'll find the door shut against you. I've--I've often thought what I should do if I set eyes on you again. That's what I shall do. I can't let you come." "Essie," the stranger turned to Mrs. Fourmy, "I'm dead broke." "You must come and tell us, but you mustn't stay. We've been out, René and I. We've got supper." Her voice thinned away. She could speak no more. Her hand pressed René to move on, and they set out toward their house with the man following. René held the garden gate open, and stayed for a moment fumbling for his key. When he found it, his father and mother were standing silhouetted against the glass panel of the door. He let them in, and, obeying an obscure instinct that stirred in him, went upstairs to leave them alone together. Not for long. He found that in his confusion he had taken the viands with him. He gained a few moments in the kitchen preparing a tray (Polly was out for the evening and not yet returned), and then, with the dishes clattering as he walked, he rejoined them in the dining-room. He had not consciously expected anything, but as he entered the dining-room he saw his father with his back turned to him at the corner cupboard with his hand on the key, his head cocked, his shoulders up, very like George, and it was as though he had foreseen it. It was uncanny and his heart ached in a sort of dread. His mother's face was shining with a glowing excitement, and she looked away from him as she said: "Your father wants us to let him stay for a little. There's George's room, you know, and I want him to." René felt helpless. The emergency was too strong for him. "All right," he said. His father turned and smiled pleasantly. "That's good of you--very good of you. I'd be in the cart without. I'm--well--I've been---- But we'll talk of that later." "Talk!" murmured René, aghast. "Who would talk? Who could find anything to say?" Miserably he laid out the plates round the big hospitable table, so big, so hospitable, that it was out of place and forbidding.