I was pondering over this agreeable prospect, and still inspecting myself in the glass, when I heard a soft knock at the door.  I opened it, and found Sonia standing outside.  She was holding a bag in her hand—­a good-sized Gladstone that had evidently seen some hard work in its time, and she came into the room and shut the door behind her before speaking.

“Well,” she said, in her curious, half-sullen way, “are you pleased you are going to London?”

“Why, yes,” I said; “I’m pleased enough.”

As a matter of fact the word “pleased” seemed rather too simple to sum up my emotions altogether adequately.

She placed the bag on the floor and sat down on the bed.  Then, leaning her face against the bottom rail, she stared up at me for a moment without speaking.

“What did the doctor tell you?” she asked at last.

“He told me I could go up to London by the two-five,” I said.

“Is that all?”

“Dr. McMurtrie,” I reminded her, “is never recklessly communicative.”  Then I paused.  “Still I should like to know the reason for the change of programme,” I added.

She raised her head and glanced half nervously, half defiantly at the door.

“We are going to give up this house tomorrow—­that’s the reason,” she said, speaking low and rather quickly.  “Our work here is finished, and it will be best for us to leave as soon as possible.”

“I wish,” I said regretfully, “that I inspired just a little more confidence.”

Sonia hesitated.  Then she sat up, and with a characteristic gesture of hers pushed back her hair from her forehead.

“Come here,” she said slowly; “come quite close to me.”

I walked towards her, wondering at the sudden change in her voice.  As I approached she straightened her arms out each side of her, and half-closing her eyes, raised her face to mine.

“Kiss me,” she said, almost in a whisper; “kiss my lips.”

I could hardly have declined such an invitation even if I had wished to, but as a matter of fact I felt no such prompting.  It was over three years since I had kissed anybody, and with her eyes half-closed and her breast softly rising and falling, Sonia looked decidedly attractive.  I bent down till my mouth was almost touching hers.  Then with a little sigh she put her arms round my neck, and slowly and deliberately our lips met.

It was at this exceedingly inopportune moment that Savaroff’s guttural voice came grating up the stairs from the hall below.

“Sonia!” he shouted—­“Sonia!  Where are you?  I want you.”

She quietly disengaged her arms, and drawing back, paused for a moment with her hands on my shoulders.

“Now you understand,” she said, looking straight into my eyes.  “They are nothing to me, my father and the doctor—­I hate them both.  It is you I am thinking of—­you only.”  She leaned forward and swiftly, almost fiercely again kissed my mouth.  “When the time comes,” she whispered—­