Brigit hated the house, but it was cheap, and she had little money.

With a grunt of furious distaste she sat down in a satin chair, and leaning back began to smoke.  The tables in the room were very bare, for the chief ornaments had been photographs—­in very elaborate frames—­of Maidie Conyers’ friends, and Brigit, finding that she loathed Maidie Conyers’ friends, had banished them one and all.

“Loathsome room,” the girl said aloud, lighting a fresh cigarette, “disgusting curtains.”

What she in reality felt mostly, though she did not know it, was the lack of room in the flat.  Used all her life to the large rooms of Kingsmead, she felt, now that the unusual heat had come, cramped and restless.

It maddened her to have to make plans.  Where should she go?  How like that little wretch Pammy to go and have measles now.

She would go to Golden Square as soon as it got a little cooler and make Victor play to her.  They might go for a drive later.  Or she might make Theo take her for a walk in the park.  Suddenly she heard a slight scratching noise in the entry, and rose.  The porter, to save himself trouble, was letting some visitor in unannounced.  She would murder that porter.

But when she saw the visitor she forgot the guilty official.

“Gerald!”

“Yes, Brigit.  Do—­do you mind?”

“I—­yes, I mind, of course I do.  Why have you come?”

Carron, who was very smartly dressed and who looked wretchedly ill, sank into a chair.

“It is nearly four months ago,” he murmured.  “I—­I hoped you would have forgiven me.”

“Well, I haven’t.  So please go.”

Her ill-humour, accumulating ever since the receipt of the wire from the Lenskys, seemed about to burst.  She looked exceedingly angry, and the poor wretch in the chair before her trembled as he looked at her.

“D—­don’t be so hard on me, Bicky.”

“Don’t call me Bicky.  And please go.  I don’t want to be rude, but I shall lose my temper if you don’t.”

Carron’s pinched face quivered.  “I—­I am very ill Brigit,” he said in a hurried, deprecating way.  “I—­I am not sleeping at all, my nerves are—­rotten.  And I thought I’d die if I couldn’t see you.  Don’t be any harder on me than—­than necessary.”

She sat down on the arm of a chair, and looked at him closely.

“You do look ill—­very ill.  And you look—­I say, Gerald, are you taking anything?”

He gave a shrill, cackling laugh.  “Taking anything.  No.  You mean morphine or something of that kind? Pas si bete, my dear.  Oh, no, I have always had a perfect horror of anything like that.  W—­why?”

“Because—­I think you are,” she returned coolly.  “Show me your left arm, Gerald.”

“No, no, you are mad, my dear,—­I assure you I don’t.  I give you my word of honour——­”

She came to him, and taking his arm in her strong hands pushed up his sleeves and studied his emaciated arm for a few seconds in silence.