The excellent entertainment provided for them acted as a palliative to Winnie's irritation and Bob Purnett's acute curiosity. There are no 'intervals' at music halls; they were switched too quickly from diversion to diversion for much opportunity of talk to present itself; and during the 'orchestral interlude,' half-way through the programme, Bob left his place in search of refreshment. When they came out, the subject of 'Mrs. Smith' had not advanced further between them.

Winnie refused her escort's offer of supper. By now she was tired out, and she felt, though reluctant to own it, a childish instinct—since she had to sleep in that desert of a house—to hide her head between the sheets before midnight. This aim a swift motor-cab might just enable her to accomplish.

Nor did the subject advance rapidly when the cab had started. Winnie lay back against the cushions in a languid weariness, not equal to thinking any more about her affairs that night. Bob sat opposite, not beside her, for fear of his cigar smoke troubling her. She often closed her eyes; then he would indulge himself in a cautious scrutiny of her face as the street lamps lit it up in their rapid passage. She looked exceedingly pretty, and would look prettier still—indeed, 'ripping'—with just a little bit of make-up; for she was very pale, and life had already drawn three or four delicate but unmistakable lines about eyes and mouth. Bob allowed himself to consider her with more attention than he had ever accorded to her before, and with a new sort of attention—on his own account as a man, not merely as a respectful critic of Godfrey Ledstone's taste. Because that remark of hers about not being called 'Mrs. Ledstone'—on pain of going mad—made a difference. Perhaps it meant only a tiff—or, as he called it, a 'row.' Perhaps it meant more; perhaps it was 'all off' between her and Godfrey—a final separation.

Whatever the remark meant, the state of affairs it indicated brought Winnie more within her present companion's mental horizon. Tiffs and separations were phenomena quite familiar to his experience. The truth might be put higher; tiffs were the necessary concomitant, and separations the inevitable end, of sentimental friendships. They came more or less frequently, sooner or later; but they came. Growing frequency of tiffs usually heralded separations. But sometimes the 'big row' came all at once—a storm out of a blue sky, a sudden hurricane, in which the consort ships lost touch of one another—or one went under, while the other sailed away. All this was familiar ground to Bob Purnett; he had often seen it, he had experienced it, he had joked and, in his own vein, philosophized about it. The thing he had not understood—though he had punctiliously feigned to accept—was the sanctity and permanence of a tie which was, as everybody really must know, neither sacred nor likely to be permanent. There he was out of his depth; when tiffs and separations came on the scene, Bob felt his feet touch bottom. And he had always been of opinion, in his heart, that, whatever Winnie might believe, Godfrey Ledstone felt just as he did. Of course Godfrey had had to pretend otherwise—well, the face opposite Bob in the cab was worth a bit of pretending.

Winnie spoke briefly, two or three times, of the performance they had seen, but said nothing more about herself. When they arrived at her door, she told him to keep the cab.

"Because I've got nothing for you to eat, and I think you finished even the whisky! Thanks for my evening, Mr. Purnett."

He walked through the little court up to the door with her. "And you look as tired as a dog," he remarked—with a successful suppression of 'Mrs. Ledstone.' "What you want is a good sleep, and—and it'll all look brighter in the morning. May I come and see you soon?"

"If I'm here, of course you may. But I haven't made up my mind. I may go back to the country, to the Aikenheads, my cousins—where I met Godfrey, you know."

He could not resist a question. "I say, is there trouble? You know how I like you both. Has there been a row?"

She smiled at him. "Godfrey avoided any danger of that. I don't want to talk about it, but you may as well know. Godfrey has gone away."

"Oh, but he'll come back, Mrs.——He'll come back, I mean, you know."

"Never. And I don't want him. Don't ask me any more—to-night, anyhow." She gave him her hand with a friendly pressure. "Good-night."

"Good Lord! Well, I'm sorry. I say, you won't cut me now, will you?"

"I haven't so many friends that I need cut a good one. Now, if you drive off at once, you'll be back in time to get some supper somewhere else." She smiled again, and in a longing for comfort owned to him—and to herself—her childish fears. "And I want to be snug in bed before the spooks come out! I feel rather lonely. So, again, good-night." He had a last vision of her small pale face as she slowly, reluctantly it seemed to him, shut the door. A great rattle of bolts followed.

"Well, I'm left outside, anyhow," Bob reflected philosophically, as he walked back to the cab. But his mind was occupied with the picture of the proud forlorn woman, there alone in the empty house, very much alone in the world too, and rather afraid of 'spooks.' All his natural kindliness of heart was aroused in pity and sympathy for her. "I should like to give her a really good time," he thought. In that aspect his impulse was honestly unselfish. But the image of the pale delicate face abode with him also. The two aspects of his impulse mingled; he saw no reason why they should not, if it were really 'all off' between her and Godfrey Ledstone. "I think she likes me well enough—I wonder if she does!" He did not, to do him justice, ask an extravagant degree of devotion in return for any 'good times' which he might find himself able to offer. When it is so easy for two people with good tempers, sound digestions, and plenty of ready cash to enjoy themselves, why spoil it all by asking too much? Surely he and Winnie could enjoy themselves? The idea stuck in his mind. Again, why—to him—should it not? His scrupulous behaviour hitherto had been based on loyalty to Godfrey Ledstone. It appeared that he was released from the obligation by his friend's own act. "He can't say I didn't play the game, while the thing lasted," thought Bob, with justifiable self-satisfaction.

The morrow of a catastrophe is perhaps harder to bear than the hour in which it befalls us. The excitement of battling with fate is gone; but the wounds smart and the bruises ache. Physically refreshed by sleep—a sleep happily unbroken by assaults from without or ghostly visitants within the house—Winnie braced her courage to meet the call on it. Her task, not easy, yet was plain. She would not weep for her Godfrey Ledstone; she would try not to think of him, nor to let her thoughts stray back to the early days with him. She would and must think of the other Godfrey, the one in Woburn Square. What woman would weep for such a man as that—except his mother? On him she would fix her thoughts, until she need think no more of either of them. She had to think of herself—of what she had done and of what she was now to do. On the first head she admitted a blunder, but no disgrace—a mistake not of principle or theory, only a mistake in her man; with regard to the second, she must make a decision.

Just before she had fairly settled down to this task, she had a visitor. At half-past eleven—early hours for her to be out and about—Mrs. Lenoir appeared.

"I was supping at the Carlton grill-room last night," she explained, "with a couple of girls whom I'd taken to the play, and Bob Purnett came in. He drove me back home, and—I don't know if he ought to have—but he told me about some trouble here. So, as I'm an interfering old woman, I came round to see if I could be of any use." Her manner to-day was less stately and more cordial. Also she spoke with a certain frankness. "You see, I know something about this sort of thing, my dear."

Winnie, of course, distinguished her 'sort of thing' very broadly from 'the sort of thing' to which Mrs. Lenoir must be assumed to refer, but she made no secret of the state of the case or of her own attitude towards it. "I accept it absolutely, but I'm bitterly hurt by the way it was done."

"Oh, you can put it that way, my dear; but you're human like the rest of us, and, of course, you hate having him taken away from you. Now shall I try what I can do?"

"Not for the world! Not a word, nor a sign! It's my mistake, and I stand by it. If he came back, it would never be the same thing. It was beautiful; it would be shameful now."

Mrs. Lenoir smiled doubtfully; she had an imperfect understanding of the mode of thought.

"Very well, that's settled. And, for my part, I think you're well rid of him. A weak creature! Let him marry a Bloomsbury girl, and I hope she'll keep him in fine order. But what are you going to do?"

"I don't quite know. Stephen and Tora would let me go back to Shaylor's Patch for as long as I liked."

"Oh, Shaylor's Patch! To talk about it all, over and over again!"

A note of impatience in her friend's voice was amusingly evident to Winnie. "You mean the less I talk about it, the better?" she asked, smiling.

"Well, you haven't made exactly a success of it, have you?" The manner was kinder than the words.

"And I didn't make exactly a success of my marriage either," Winnie reflected, in a puzzled dolefulness. Because, if both orthodoxy and unorthodoxy go wrong, what is a poor human woman to do? "Well, if I mayn't go to Shaylor's Patch—at present, anyhow—I must stay here, Mrs. Lenoir; that's all. The studio's in my name, because I could give better security than Godfrey, and I can stay if I want to."

"Not very cheerful—and only that dirty old Irishwoman to do for you!"

"Oh, please don't abuse Mrs. O'Leary. She's my one consolation."

Mrs. Lenoir looked at her with something less than her usual self-confidence. It was in a decidedly doubtful and tentative tone that she put her question: "I couldn't persuade you to come and put up with me—in both senses—for a bit?"

Winnie was surprised and touched; to her despairing mood any kindness was a great kindness.

"That's really good of you," she said, pressing Mrs. Lenoir's hand for a moment. "It's—merciful."

"I'm an old woman now, my dear, and most of my cronies are getting old too. Still, some young folks look in now and then. We aren't at all gay; but you'll be comfortable, and you can have a rest while you look about you." There was a trace of the explanatory, of the reassuring, about Mrs. Lenoir's sketch of her home life.

"What's good enough for you is good enough for me, you know," Winnie remarked, with a smile.

"Oh, I'm not so sure! Oh, I'm not speaking of creature comforts and so on. But you seem to me to expect so much of—of everybody."

Winnie took the hand she had pressed and held it. "And you?" she asked.

"Never mind me. You're young and attractive. Don't go on expecting too much. They take what they can."

"They? Who?"

"Men," said Mrs. Lenoir. Then out of those distant, thoughtful, no longer very bright eyes flashed for an instant the roguish twinkle for which she had once been famous. "I've given them as good as I got, though," said she. "And now—will you come?"

Winnie laughed. "Well, do you think I should prefer this empty tomb?" she asked. Yes—empty and a tomb—apt words for what the studio now was. "You weren't as nice as this at Shaylor's Patch—though you always said things that made me think."

"They've all got their heads in the air at Shaylor's Patch—dear creatures!"

"I shall enjoy staying with you. Is it really convenient?" Mrs. Lenoir smiled. "Oh, but that's a silly question, because I know you meant it. When may I come?"

"Not a moment later than this afternoon."

"Well, the truth is I didn't fancy sleeping here again. I expect I should have gone to Shaylor's Patch."

Again Mrs. Lenoir smiled. "You're full of pluck, but you're scarcely hard enough, my dear. If I'm a failure, Shaylor's Patch will do later, won't it?"

"I shall disgrace you. I've nothing to wear. We were—I'm very poor, you know."

"I'd give every pound at my bank and every rag off my back for one line of your figure," said Mrs. Lenoir. "I was beautiful once, you know, my dear." Her voice took on a note of generous recognition. "You're very well—in the petite style, Winnie." But by this she evidently meant something different from her 'beautiful.' Well, it was matter of history.

That afternoon, then, witnessed a remarkable change in Winnie's external conditions. Instead of the desolate uncomfortable studio, charged with memories too happy or too unhappy—there seemed nothing between the two, and the extremes met—peopled, also, with 'spooks' potential if not visualized, there was Mrs. Lenoir's luxurious flat in Knightsbridge, replete, as the auctioneers say, with every modern convenience. The difference was more than external. She was no longer a derelict—left stranded at the studio or to drift back to Shaylor's Patch. No doubt it might be said that she was received out of charity. Amply acknowledging the boon, Winnie had yet the wit to perceive that the charity was discriminating. Not for her had she been plain, not for her had she been uninteresting! In a sense she had earned it. And in a sense, too, she felt that she was in process of being avenged on Godfrey Ledstone and on Woburn Square. A parallel might be traced here between her feelings and Cyril Maxon's. They had made her count for nothing; she felt that at Mrs. Lenoir's she might still count. The sorrow and the hurt remained, but at least this was not finality. She had suffered under a dread suspicion that in their different ways both Shaylor's Patch and the solitary studio were. Here she had a renewed sense of life, of a future possible. Yet here too, for the first time since Godfrey left her, she lost her composure, and the tears came—quite soon, within ten minutes after Mrs. Lenoir's greeting.

Mrs. Lenoir understood. "There, you're not so angry any more," she said. "You're beginning to see that it must have happened—with that fellow! Now Emily will make you comfortable, and put you to bed till dinner-time. You needn't get up for that unless you like. There's only the General coming; it's one of his nights."

Oh, the comfort of a good Emily—a maid not too young and not too old, not too flighty and not too crabbed, light of hand, sympathetic, entirely understanding that her lady has a right to be much more comfortable than she has ever thought of being herself! In Maxon days Winnie had possessed a maid. They seemed far off, and never had there been one as good as Mrs. Lenoir's Emily. She had come into Mrs. Lenoir's life about the same time as Mr. Lenoir had, but with an effect that an impartial observer could not but recognize as not only more durable, but also more essentially important—save that Lenoir had left the money which made Emily possible. Mrs. Lenoir had paid for the money—in five years' loyalty and service.

Winnie reposed between deliciously fine sheets—why, it was like Devonshire Street, without Cyril Maxon!—and watched Emily dexterously disposing her wardrobe. It was not ample. Some of the effects of the Maxon days she had left behind in her hurried flight; most of the rest had worn out. But there were relics of her gilded slavery. These Emily tactfully admired; the humbler purchases of 'Mrs. Ledstone' she stowed away without comment. Also without comment, but with extraordinary tact, she laid out the inferior of Winnie's two evening dresses.

"There's nobody coming but the General, miss," said she.

"Now why does she call me 'miss'—and who's the General?" These two problems rose in Winnie's mind, but did not demand instant solution. They were not like the questions of the last few days; they were more like Shaylor's Patch conundrums—interesting, but not urgent, willing to wait for an idle hour or a rainy day, yielding place to a shining sun or a romp with Alice. They yielded place now to Winnie's great physical comfort, to her sense of rescue from the desolate studio, to her respite from the feeling of finality and of failure. With immense surprise she realized, as she lay there—in a quiet hour between Emily's deft and charitable unpacking and Emily's return to get her into the inferior frock (good enough for that unexplained General)—that she was what any reasonably minded being would call happy. Though the great experiment had failed, though Godfrey was at this moment in Woburn Square, though Mabel Thurseley existed! "Oh, well, I was so tired," she apologized to herself shamefacedly.

She got down into the small but pretty drawing-room in good time. Yet Mrs. Lenoir was there before her, clad in a tea-gown, looking, as it occurred to Winnie, rather like Mrs. Siddons—a cheerful Mrs. Siddons, as, indeed, the great woman appears to have been in private life.

"I got my things off early, so as to leave you Emily," said the hostess. She obviously did not consider that she had been getting anything on.

"What a dear she is!" Winnie came to the fire and stood there, a slim-limbed creature, warming herself through garments easily penetrable by the welcome blaze.

"Quite a find! The General sent her to me. Her husband was a sergeant-major in his regiment—killed in South Africa."

The General again! But Winnie postponed that question. Her lips curved in amusement. "She calls me 'miss.'"

"Better than that silly 'Mrs. Smith' you said to Bob Purnett. Only unhappy women try to make epigrams. And for a woman to be unhappy is to be a failure."

"Isn't that one—almost—Mrs. Lenoir?"

"Quite quick, my dear!" her hostess commented. "But if it is, it's old. I told Emily you were a second cousin. I never know exactly what it means, but in my experience it's quite useful. But please yourself, Winnie. Who will you be?"

"Did Emily believe what you told her?"

The twinkle came again. "She's much too good a servant ever to raise that question. What was your name?"

"My maiden name? Wilkins."

"I think names ending in 'kins' are very ugly," said Mrs. Lenoir. "But a modification? What about Wilson? 'Winnie Wilson' is quite pretty."

"'Miss Winnie Wilson'? Isn't it rather—well, rather late in the day for that? But, I don't want to be Ledstone—and it's rather unfair to call myself Maxon still."

"Names," observed Mrs. Lenoir, "are really not worth troubling about, so long as you don't hurt people's pride. I used to have a fetish-like feeling about them—as if, I mean, you couldn't get rid of the one you were born with, or, my dear, take one you had no particular right to. But one night, long ago, somebody—I really forget who—brought an Oxford don to supper. We got on the subject, and he told me that a great philosopher—named Dobbs, if I remember rightly—defined a name as 'a word taken at pleasure to serve for a mark.'" She looked across the hearthrug, confidently expecting Winnie's approval. "I liked it, and it stuck in my memory."

"It does make things simpler, Mrs. Lenoir."

"Mind you, I wouldn't take a great name I hadn't a right to. Courtenays and Devereauxes in the chorus are very bad form. But I don't see why you shouldn't be Wilson. And the 'Miss' avoids a lot of questions."

"All right. Miss Winnie Wilson be it! It sounds like a new toy. And now, Mrs. Lenoir, for the other problem that Emily has raised. Who's the General?"

Mrs. Lenoir liked her young friend, but possibly thought that she was becoming a trifle impertinent. Not that she minded that; in her heart she greeted it as a rebound from misery; in the young it often is.

"If you've any taste in men—which, up to now, you've given your friends no reason to think—you'll like the General very much."

"Will he like me?"

"The only advantage of age is that I shan't mind if he does, Winnie."

Winnie darted towards her. "What a dear you've been to me to-day!"

"Hush, I think I hear the General's step."

The parlour-maid—not Emily, but a young woman, smart and a trifle scornful—announced, "Sir Hugh Merriam, ma'am—and dinner's served."