“Any necessity?” Ellen repeated, half hysterically.  “Alfred Burton, let’s have done with this shilly-shallying!  After coming home regularly to your meals for six years, do you suppose you can disappear and not have people curious?  Do you suppose you can leave your wife and son and not a word said or a question asked?  What I want to know is this—­are you coming home to Clematis Villa or are you not?”

“At present I am not,” Burton declared, gently but very firmly indeed.

“Is it true that you’ve got the sack from Mr. Waddington?”

“Perfectly,” he admitted.  “I have found some other work, though.”

She leaned forward so that one of those dyed feathers to which he objected so strongly brushed his cheek.

“Have you touched the money in the Savings Bank?” she demanded.

“I have drawn out every penny of it to send you week by week,” he replied, “but I am in a position now to replace it.  You can do it yourself, in your own name, if you like.  Here it is.”

He produced a little roll of notes and handed them to her.  She took them with shaking fingers.  She was beginning to lose some of her courage.  The sight of the money impressed her.

“Alfred Burton,” she said, “why don’t you drop all this foolishness?  Come home with us this afternoon.”

She leaned across the table, on which she had once more plumped her elbows.  She looked at him in a way he had once found fascinating—­her chin thrown forward, her cheeks supported by her knuckles.  Little specks of her boa fell into her untouched teacup.

“Come home with Alfred and me,” she begged, with half-ashamed earnestness.  “It’s band night and we might ask the Johnsons in to supper.  I’ve got a nice steak in the house, been hanging, and Mrs. Cross could come in and cook it while we are out.  Mr. Johnson would sing to us afterwards, and there’s your banjo.  You do play it so well, Alfred.  You used to like band nights—­to look forward to them all the week.  Come, now!”

The man’s whole being was in a state of revolt.  It was an amazing thing indeed, this which had come to him.  No wonder Ellen was puzzled!  She had right on her side, and more than right.  It was perfectly true that he had been accustomed to look forward to band nights.  It was true that he used to like to have a neighbor in to supper afterwards, and play the fool with the banjo and crack silly jokes; talk shop with Johnson, who was an auctioneer’s clerk himself; smoke atrocious cigars and make worse puns.  And now!  He looked at her almost pitifully.

“I—­I can’t manage it just yet,” he said, hurriedly.  “I’ll write—­or see you again soon.  Ellen, I’m sorry,” he wound up, “but just at present I can’t change anything.”