Next day he wired again.

Regret, unable to come.  Will write.

Mildred had suggested coming at four in the afternoon, and he would not tell her that the hour was inconvenient.  After all she came first.  He waited for her impatiently.  He watched for her at the window and opened the front-door himself.

“Well?  Did you see Nixon?”

“Yes,” she answered.  “He said it wasn’t any good.  Nothing’s to be done.  I must just grin and bear it.”

“But that’s impossible,” cried Philip.

She sat down wearily.

“Did he give any reasons?” he asked.

She gave him a crumpled letter.

“There’s your letter, Philip.  I never took it.  I couldn’t tell you yesterday, I really couldn’t.  Emil didn’t marry me.  He couldn’t.  He had a wife already and three children.”

Philip felt a sudden pang of jealousy and anguish.  It was almost more than he could bear.

“That’s why I couldn’t go back to my aunt.  There’s no one I can go to but you.”

“What made you go away with him?” Philip asked, in a low voice which he struggled to make firm.

“I don’t know.  I didn’t know he was a married man at first, and when he told me I gave him a piece of my mind.  And then I didn’t see him for months, and when he came to the shop again and asked me I don’t know what came over me.  I felt as if I couldn’t help it.  I had to go with him.”

“Were you in love with him?”

“I don’t know.  I couldn’t hardly help laughing at the things he said.  And there was something about him—­he said I’d never regret it, he promised to give me seven pounds a week—­he said he was earning fifteen, and it was all a lie, he wasn’t.  And then I was sick of going to the shop every morning, and I wasn’t getting on very well with my aunt; she wanted to treat me as a servant instead of a relation, said I ought to do my own room, and if I didn’t do it nobody was going to do it for me.  Oh, I wish I hadn’t.  But when he came to the shop and asked me I felt I couldn’t help it.”

Philip moved away from her.  He sat down at the table and buried his face in his hands.  He felt dreadfully humiliated.

“You’re not angry with me, Philip?” she asked piteously.

“No,” he answered, looking up but away from her, “only I’m awfully hurt.”

“Why?”

“You see, I was so dreadfully in love with you.  I did everything I could to make you care for me.  I thought you were incapable of loving anyone.  It’s so horrible to know that you were willing to sacrifice everything for that bounder.  I wonder what you saw in him.”

“I’m awfully sorry, Philip.  I regretted it bitterly afterwards, I promise you that.”

He thought of Emil Miller, with his pasty, unhealthy look, his shifty blue eyes, and the vulgar smartness of his appearance; he always wore bright red knitted waistcoats.  Philip sighed.  She got up and went to him.  She put her arm round his neck.