“This.  Why you sent for me.”

She felt as if he had stabbed her.  She stopped, overwhelmed by the blow that the man she loved so whole-heartedly had struck her.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Nothing—­only—­”

“Only what?”

“You don’t seem at all glad to see me.”

She spoke as if pained at and resentful of his coldness.  He looked at her, to watch the suffering in her eyes crystallise into a defiant hardness.

“I am, no end.  But I’m tired and cold.  Wait till we’ve had something to eat,” he said kindly.

Mavis melted.  Her love for him was such that she found it no easy matter being angry with him.

“How selfish of me!  I ought to have known,” she remarked.  “Let someone take your bag.”

“I don’t know where I’m going to stop.  I’ll leave it at the station for the present.”

“Aren’t you going home?” she asked in some surprise.

“We’ll talk over everything when I’ve got warm.”

She waited while he left his bag in the cloak-room.  When he joined her, they walked along the street leading from the station.

“I could have seen what’s up with you without being told,” he remarked ungenially.

“It won’t be for so very long.  I shall look all right again some day,” she declared, with a sad little laugh.

“That’s the worst of women,” he went on.  “Just when you think everything’s all right, this goes and happens.”

His words fired her blood.

“I should have thought you would have been very proud,” she cried.

“Eh!”

“However foolish I’ve been, I’m not the ordinary sort of woman.  Where I’ve been wrong is in being too kind to you.”

She paused for breath.  She was also a little surprised at her bold words; she was so completely at the man’s mercy.

“I do appreciate it.  I’d be a fool if I didn’t.  But it’s this development that’s so inconvenient.”

“Inconvenient!  Inconvenient you call it—!”

“This will do us,” he interrupted, pausing at the doorway of the “King’s Arms Hotel.”

“I’m not sure I’ll come in.”

“Please yourself.  But it’s as well to have a talk, so that we can see exactly where we stand.”

His words voiced the present desire of her heart.  She was burning to put an end to her suspense, to find out exactly where she stood.  The comparative comfort of the interior of the hotel thawed his coldness.

“Rather a difficult little Mavis,” he smiled as they ascended the stairs.

“I’m all right till I’m roused.  Then I feel capable of anything.”

“The sort of girl I admire,” he admitted.