She was shivering now, and, almost unwillingly, he put his arm round her again.  “Rot!” he exclaimed.  “Don’t let yourself think such things, Bubbles—­”

“I know you don’t believe it, Bill, but I have got the power of raising Them.”

“I don’t know whether I believe it or not,” he said slowly.  “And I—­I sometimes wonder if you believe it, Bubbles, or if you’re only pretending?”

There was a pause.  And then Bubbles said in a strange tone:  “’Tisn’t a question of believing it now, Bill.  I know it’s true!  I wish it wasn’t.”

“If it’s true,” he said, “or even if you only believe it’s true, what on earth made you do what you did to-night?”

“It was so deadly,” she exclaimed, “so deadly dull!” She yawned.  “You see, I can’t help yawning even at the recollection of it!”

And in the darkness her companion smiled.

“I felt as if I wanted to wake them all up!  Also I felt as if I wanted to know something more about them than I did.  Also”—­she hesitated.

“Yes?” he said questioningly.

“I rather wanted to impress Aunt Blanche.”  The words came slowly, reluctantly.

“I wonder what made you want to do that?” asked Donnington dryly.

“Somehow—­well, you know, Bill, that sort of cool unbelief of hers stings me.  She’s always thought I make it all up as I go along.”

“You do sometimes,” he said in a low voice.

“I used to, Bill—­but I don’t now:  it isn’t necessary.”

He turned rather quickly.  “Honest Injun, Bubbles?”

“Yes.  Honest Injun!” There was a pause.  “What do you think of Varick?” she suddenly whispered.

“I think Mr. Varick,” answered Donnington coldly, “is a thoroughly nice sort of chap.  I like his rather elaborate, old-fashioned manners.”

“He’s a queer card for all his pretty manners,” muttered Bubbles; and somehow Donnington felt that something else was on the tip of her tongue to say, but that she had checked herself, just in time.

“I wish,” he said earnestly, “I do wish, Bubbles, that you and I could have a nice, old-fashioned Christmas.  They sent up to-night to know if Mr. Varick would allow some of his holly to be cut for decorating the church—­why shouldn’t we go down to-morrow and help?  Do, Bubbles—­to please me!”

“I will,” she said penitently.  “I will, dearest.”

Donnington sighed—­a short, quick sigh.  He could remember the exquisite thrill it had given him when she had first uttered the word—­in a crowd of careless people.  Now, when Bubbles called him “dearest” it did not thrill him at all, for he knew she said it to a great many people—­and yet it always gave him pleasure to hear her utter the dear, intimate little word to him.

“Get up and go to bed, you naughty girl!” he said good-humouredly, but there was a great deal of tenderness in his low, level tone.

She rose quickly to her feet.  All her movements were quick and lightsome and free.  There was a touch of Ariel about Bubbles, so Bill Donnington sometimes told himself.