‘Paul!’

Ponsonby on his way to bed is surprised at hearing himself called.

‘Yes,’ he replies.

‘I want to tell you something,’ is the answer.

The gas has been turned out and all the other men are just turning in for the night.

‘What do you want?’ he says, going into the sitting-room, from whence the voice issues, a solitary candle burns on the table, and discloses Philippa.

‘You here?’ he exclaims surprised.

‘Yes,’ she says.  ’I am afraid I vexed you this afternoon, and I wanted to tell you I was sorry, and ...—­’

’Don’t think about it again, but really you know you ought not to be here—­’

‘I only waited to tell you that,’ she says, turning towards the door feeling utterly miserable, and the tears that she has tried to keep back break forth, and covering her face with her hands she cries as though her heart would break.

Paul goes up to her.  ‘Philippa, my dear,’ he says very gently, ’there is something very wrong, can’t you tell me why Jimmy went away—­’

‘No, no,’ she sobs.  ‘I told him to go, but I can’t tell you why—­’

‘How cold you are,’ he says.  ’Stop crying and go to bed at once, or you will make yourself ill.’

‘Very well,’ replies she, meekly.  ‘But you [sob] you won’t tell Mabel—­’

‘I won’t tell a soul.’

‘And you’re not vexed with me?’

‘No; why should I be.  Good-night.’

‘Good-night,’ such a sad little face she turns to him, that he stoops and kisses it.

‘What a child she is,’ he thinks, as he watches her down the passage.  ’I wonder what induced her to throw Jimmy over.  Couldn’t have been better off as regards a husband.  Money! as if that would ever enter into her head.  Can’t make it out at all.  She likes him I can see.’

For some time, Paul puzzles his handsome head about Philippa, and then when sleep has come, he dreams of the woman he loved; she to whom he gave his love, his faith, his all, only to be abused; the woman who has blighted his life.  Oh! it is a strange world.  It is like a puzzle that everyone tries to make, but does not succeed because the principal parts are missing.  Will they ever be found, the missing links, the pieces of the puzzle, the answer to the ‘whys’ and ‘wherefores?’

    ’We run a race to-day, and find no halting place,
    All things we see be far within our scope
    And still we peer beyond with craving face.’

CHAPTER VIII

In a few days they are back again in Brook Street, George, Mabel and Philippa.  It is the beginning of September and anything more dreary and deserted than the parks could not be imagined.  No one is in London.  Who would be when the seaside is everything delightful and the moors are covered with heather and grouse?  Philippa shudders as she looks out of her bedroom window into the mews, even that is deserted, a canary in a very small cage and a lean cat are the only living creatures to be seen.