“You have failed, then.”

“I did everything that could be done,” Tavernake insisted eagerly.  “I am quite sure that nothing anybody could say would move Beatrice.  She is very decided indeed.”

“I have another idea,” Elizabeth remarked, after a brief pause.  “She will not come to me; very well, I must go to her.  You must take me there.”

“I cannot do that,” Tavernake answered.

“Why not?”

“Beatrice has refused absolutely to permit me to tell you or any one else of her whereabouts,” he declared.  “Without her permission I cannot do it.”

“Do you mean that?” she asked.

“Of course,” he answered uncomfortably.

There was another silence.  When she spoke again, her voice had changed for the second time.  Tavernake felt his heart sink as he listened.

“Very well,” she said.  “I thought that you were my friend, that you wished to help me.”

“I do,” he replied, “but you would not have me break my word?”

“You are breaking your word with me,” she told him.

“It is a different thing,” he insisted.

“You will not take me there?” she said once more.

“I cannot,” Tavernake answered.

“Very well, good-bye!”

“Don’t go,” he begged.  “Can’t I see you somewhere for a few minutes this evening?”

“I am afraid not,” Elizabeth replied coolly.

“Are you going out?” he persisted.

“I am going to the Duke of York’s Theatre with some friends,” she answered.  “I am sorry.  You have disappointed me.”

She rang off and he turned away from the telephone booth into the street.  It seemed to him, as he walked down the crowded thoroughfare, that some reflection of his own self-contempt was visible in the countenances of the men and women who were hurrying past him.  Wherever he looked, he was acutely conscious of it.  In his heart he felt the bitter sense of shame of a man who wilfully succumbs to weakness.  Yet that night he made his efforts.

For four hours he sat in his lonely rooms and worked.  Then the unequal struggle was ended.  With a groan he caught up his hat and coat and left the house.  Half an hour later, he was among the little crowd of loiterers and footmen standing outside the doors of the Duke of York’s Theatre.

It was still some time before the termination of the performance.  As the slow minutes dragged by, he grew to hate himself, to hate this new thing in his life which had torn down his everyday standards, which had carried him off his feet in this strange and detestable fashion.  It was a dormant sense, without a doubt, which Elizabeth had stirred into life—­the sense of sex, quiescent in him so long, chiefly through his perfect physical sanity; perhaps, too, in some measure, from his half-starved imagination.  It was significant, though, that once aroused it burned with surprising and unwavering