From that day on, a creeping sensation of being rejected of men, never left him; the sense of identification with Noel and her tiny outcast became ever more poignant, more real; the desire to protect them ever more passionate; and the feeling that round about there were whispering voices, pointing fingers, and a growing malevolence was ever more sickening.  He was beginning too to realise the deep and hidden truth:  How easily the breath of scandal destroys the influence and sanctity of those endowed therewith by vocation; how invaluable it is to feel untarnished, and how difficult to feel that when others think you tarnished.

He tried to be with Noel as much as possible; and in the evenings they sometimes went walks together, without ever talking of what was always in their minds.  Between six and eight the girl was giving sittings to Lavendie in the drawing-room, and sometimes Pierson would come there and play to them.  He was always possessed now by a sense of the danger Noel ran from companionship with any man.  On three occasions, Jimmy Fort made his appearance after dinner.  He had so little to say that it was difficult to understand why he came; but, sharpened by this new dread for his daughter, Pierson noticed his eyes always following her.  ’He admires her,’ he thought; and often he would try his utmost to grasp the character of this man, who had lived such a roving life.  ’Is he—­can he be the sort of man I would trust Nollie to?’ he would think.  ’Oh, that I should have to hope like this that some good man would marry her—­my little Nollie, a child only the other day!’

In these sad, painful, lonely weeks he found a spot of something like refuge in Leila’s sitting-room, and would go there often for half an hour when she was back from her hospital.  That little black-walled room with its Japanese prints and its flowers, soothed him.  And Leila soothed him, innocent as he was of any knowledge of her latest aberration, and perhaps conscious that she herself was not too happy.  To watch her arranging flowers, singing her little French songs, or to find her beside him, listening to his confidences, was the only real pleasure he knew in these days.  And Leila, in turn, would watch him and think:  ’Poor Edward!  He has never lived; and never will; now!’ But sometimes the thought would shoot through her:  ’Perhaps he’s to be envied.  He doesn’t feel what I feel, anyway.  Why did I fall in love again?’

They did not speak of Noel as a rule, but one evening she expressed her views roundly.

“It was a great mistake to make Noel come back.  Edward.  It was Quixotic.  You’ll be lucky if real mischief doesn’t come of it.  She’s not a patient character; one day she’ll do something rash.  And, mind you, she’ll be much more likely to break out if she sees the world treating you badly than if it happens to herself.  I should send her back to the country, before she makes bad worse.”