She talked in panting little sentences, because Lewisham was walking in heedless big strides.  “I wonder how much—­such people—­could earn honestly.”

Lewisham slowly became aware of the question at his ear.  He hurried back from infinity.  “How much they could earn honestly?  I haven’t the slightest idea.”

He paused.  “The whole of this business puzzles me,” he said.  “I want to think.”

“It’s frightfully complex, isn’t it?” she said—­a little staggered.

But the rest of the way to the station was silence.  They parted with a hand-clasp they took a pride in—­a little perfunctory so far as Lewisham was concerned on this occasion.  She scrutinised his face as the train moved out of the station, and tried to account for his mood.  He was staring before him at unknown things as if he had already forgotten her.

He wanted to think!  But two heads, she thought, were better than one in a matter of opinion.  It troubled her to be so ignorant of his mental states.  “How we are wrapped and swathed about—­soul from soul!” she thought, staring out of the window at the dim things flying by outside.

Suddenly a fit of depression came upon her.  She felt alone—­absolutely alone—­in a void world.

Presently she returned to external things.  She became aware of two people in the next compartment eyeing her critically.  Her hand went patting at her hair.

CHAPTER XIII.

LEWISHAM INSISTS.

Ethel Henderson sat at her machine before the window of Mr. Lagume’s study, and stared blankly at the greys and blues of the November twilight.  Her face was white, her eyelids were red from recent weeping, and her hands lay motionless in her lap.  The door had just slammed behind Lagune.

“Heigh-ho!” she said.  “I wish I was dead.  Oh!  I wish I was out of it all.”

She became passive again.  “I wonder what I have done,” she said, “that I should be punished like this.”

She certainly looked anything but a Fate-haunted soul, being indeed visibly and immediately a very pretty girl.  Her head was shapely and covered with curly dark hair, and the eyebrows above her hazel eyes were clear and dark.  Her lips were finely shaped, her mouth was not too small to be expressive, her chin small, and her neck white and full and pretty.  There is no need to lay stress upon her nose—­it sufficed.  She was of a mediocre height, sturdy rather than slender, and her dress was of a pleasant, golden-brown material with the easy sleeves and graceful line of those aesthetic days.  And she sat at her typewriter and wished she was dead and wondered what she had done.