Goddard laughed shamefacedly, with a vague consciousness that he had been ungracious in not having commenced before. He helped himself to the salmon. After the first mouthful or two his aversion to food disappeared, and he went on eating with the appetite of a bigframed, very hungry man. With the exception of a sandwich and a glass of beer at the station bar before starting, he had eaten nothing since his early breakfast. The food and the wine restored his physical well-being. Lady Phayre looked on, pleased, she could scarcely tell why. These big, earnest men were sometimes like babies--so helpless, if left to themselves. She tended on him now and then in a pretty way without leaving her seat, passed his plate, handed him the little silver jug of cream, and, when the meal was over, fetched from a cupboard a box of cigarettes. Like a man unaccustomed to delicate feminine ministrations, Goddard accepted them rather tongue-tied, with a certain tremulous bashfulness. The little hospitable actions, so homely and therefore charming to a man of gentler nurture, were to him full of a rare exotic sweetness. All through the meal she exerted herself to talk to him brightly of little things, incidents that had brought them into pleasant contact during the late struggle. He finished his cigarette, and they returned to the drawingroom. Goddard stood before the fire, with his hands in his jacket pockets. The sense of personal humiliation still smouldered within him, but the raging of the flame had been subdued. He felt that he could hold up his head again. And it was the loyal tender sympathy of that woman in the low arm-chair before him who had brought it about. He had never known before how a woman could be a necessity in a man’s life. Till then he even had not realised how imperious were the cravings for her, in spite of the revolt of his galled pride, during that weary journey back to town. She looked so fair and exquisite. His eyes met hers. But something more than her beauty stirred the eternal masculine within him, and when he spoke his voice vibrated. “Will you always treat me like this, Lady Phayre?” She smiled. “Is it much to do for you?” “It is growing to mean everything in the world to me. I have lived a rough life away from women--ladies--women like you. Hitherto it has never occurred to me that I was not self-sufficing--that I could ever look to a woman for help. A year ago I should have laughed at it--thought it a sickly fancy of the hyper-sensitive semi-men in novels. But I have needed you this day, and I came to you because something stronger than I impelled me. And you have given me new life to-night. Do you know that?” “You were looking so worn out and sad when you came in, that it pained me,” said Lady Phayre, non-committally. But Goddard’s ear detected a soft note in her voice. He came near to her, sat down on the fender-stool, almost by her knees. “Why are all women not like you? What a great beautiful world it would be.”