“Here is the memorandum, Mrs. Shortman.  Let them take her for six weeks.  She will come out a different woman.”

Mrs. Shortman, supporting her thin face in her thin hand, rested her glowing eyes on Gregory.

“I’m afraid she has lost all moral sense,” she said.  “Do you know, Mr. Vigil, I’m almost afraid she never had any!”

“What do you mean?”

Mrs. Shortman turned her eyes away.

“I’m sometimes tempted to think,” she said, “that there are such people.  I wonder whether we allow enough for that.  When I was a girl in the country I remember the daughter of our vicar, a very pretty creature.  There were dreadful stories about her, even before she was married, and then we heard she was divorced.  She came up to London and earned her own living by playing the piano until she married again.  I won’t tell you her name, but she is very well known, and nobody has ever seen her show the slightest signs of being ashamed.  If there is one woman like that there may be dozens, and I sometimes think we waste——­”

Gregory said dryly: 

“I have heard you say that before.”

Mrs. Shortman bit her lips.

“I don’t think,” she said, “that I grudge my efforts or my time.”

Gregory went quickly up, and took her hand.

“I know that—­oh, I know that,” he said with feeling.

The sound of Miss Mallow furiously typing rose suddenly from the corner.  Gregory removed his hat from the peg on which it hung.

“I must go now,” he said.  “Good-night.”

Without warning, as is the way with hearts, his heart had begun to bleed, and he felt that he must be in the open air.  He took no omnibus or cab, but strode along with all his might, trying to think, trying to understand.  But he could only feel-confused and battered feelings, with now and then odd throbs of pleasure of which he was ashamed.  Whether he knew it or not, he was making his way to Chelsea, for though a man’s eyes may be fixed on the stars, his feet cannot take him there, and Chelsea seemed to them the best alternative.  He was not alone upon this journey, for many another man was going there, and many a man had been and was coming now away, and the streets were the one long streaming crowd of the summer afternoon.  And the men he met looked at Gregory, and Gregory looked at them, and neither saw the other, for so it is written of men, lest they pay attention to cares that are not their own.  The sun that scorched his face fell on their backs, the breeze that cooled his back blew on their cheeks.  For the careless world, too, was on its way, along the pavement of the universe, one of millions going to Chelsea, meeting millions coming away....

“Mrs. Bellew at home?”