“What do you mean? Far enough? I don’t understand you!”

He hesitated, then shrugged, and went to the door.

“Funny kid. All right, I’ll go. Don’t be haughty, Betty. After all . . .” Then he went out.

He was changing, she thought. Something in him made her nervous, and yet she liked him. She knew that, because when he came to see her she was conscious of elation and a certain breathlessness. She wondered, Is it possible that I can love this man? The suspicion frightened her; she put it from her at once. She thought, I must not see so much of him; perhaps it is wrong.

Only how difficult it was to put a check on their intimacy. It seemed to have grown out of hand; she had allowed it to go too far.

People were talking: Mr. Hengist, for instance. He put a wrong construction on her friendship with Wendell; it was horrible of him, but did others think as he thought? Elizabeth felt herself to be impotent, a straw in a whirlpool, swirled away against her will.

She tried, tactfully, to warn Wendell that they must be more discreet. He took her by the shoulders and said, “Damn the scandal-mongers! Are you giving me the chuck, Betty?”

All his kindnesses leaped to her mind.

“Oh, no!” she said, in distress. “How could you think that? Only ...”

“There aren’t any ‘onlys.’ I’m—I’m—dashed fond of you, old thing.”

She wanted to say, You are too fond of me, but she could not.

“We must be more careful,” she murmured.

She was not looking at him, or she would have seen the light that sprang to his eyes and realised the interpretation he put on her words.

“I wish you’d make up your mind to get a divorce,” he said under his breath. “Sometimes I don’t understand you, Betty.”

She did not understand herself; she smiled, wanly, and turned away.

Mrs. Cotton’s manner was changing, too. She said aggrievedly,

“Of course, ma’am, I have to be careful. Well, what I mean is in my position, you’ve got to be. I must say, a nicer spoken gentlemen than Mr. Wendell I never met, but what with ’im cornin’ ’ere so late an’ all—well, what I say is, I’ve got my good name to think of, haven’t I?”

Elizabeth was humiliated. Her cheeks burned when she realised to the full Mrs. Cotton’s insinuation. That anyone should think her that kind of woman was a sickening shock. In agitation she told Wendell, haltingly, and begged him not to visit her so often.

He listened, frowning.

“You’ll say I’m compromising you next!” he said, sneering.

“Oh, you don’t mean to! I—I know that—- Only people think such—awful things!”

“I like that! I compromise you! I don’t see what right you’ve got to be injured at this stage, I must say.”