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his bed. “Hold me for a little, George,” she asked. He opened his arms and she came into them. He lay holding her, quite still. He had opened his arms to the sad waif, but it was an unhappy woman lying in his arms. He could feel the movement of her lashes on his shoulder, and the wetness of tears.
    He had not lain beside her for a long time—years, it seemed. She did not come to him again.
    “You don’t think you’re working too hard, dear?” he asked once, looking at her strained face; but she said briskly, “No, I’ve got to have something to do, can’t stand doing nothing.”
    One night it was raining hard, and Bobby had been feeling sick that day, and she did not come home at her usual time. George became worried and took a taxi to the theatre and asked the doorman if she was still there. It seemed she had left some time before. “She didn’t look too well to me, sir,” volunteered the doorman, and George sat for a time in the taxi, trying not to worry. Then he gave the driver Jackie’s address;he meant to ask him if he knew where Bobby was. He sat limp in the back of the taxi, feeling the heaviness of his limbs, thinking of Bobby ill.
    The place was in a mews, and he left the taxi and walked over rough cobbles to a door which had been the door of stables. He rang, and a young man he didn’t know let him in, saying yes, Jackie Dickson was in. George climbed narrow, steep, wooden stairs slowly, feeling the weight of his body, while his heart pounded. He stood at the top of the stairs to get his breath, in a dark which smelled of canvas and oil and turpentine. There was a streak of light under a door; he went towards it, knocked, heard no answer, and opened it. The scene was a high, bare, studio sort of place, badly lighted, full of pictures, frames, junk of various kinds. Jackie, the dark, glistening youth, was seated cross-legged before the fire, grinning as he lifted his face to say something to Bobby, who sat in a chair, looking down at him. She was wearing a formal dark dress and jewellery, and her arms and neck were bare and white. She looked beautiful, George thought, glancing once, briefly, at her face, and then away; for he could see on it an emotion he did not want to recognise. The scene held for a moment before they realised he was there and turned their heads, with the same lithe movement of disturbed animals, to see him standing there in the doorway. Both faces froze. Bobby looked quickly at the young man, and it was in some kind of fear. Jackie looked sulky and angry.
    “I’ve come to look for you, dear,” said George to his wife. “It was raining and the doorman said you seemed ill.”
    “It’s very sweet of you,” she said and rose from the chair, giving her hand formally to Jackie, who nodded with bad grace at George.
    The taxi stood in the dark, gleaming rain, and George and Bobby got into it and sat side by side, while it splashed off into the street.
    “Was that the wrong thing to do, dear?” asked George, when she said nothing.
    “No,” she said.
    “I really did think you might be ill.”
    She laughed. “Perhaps I am.”
    “What’s the matter, my darling? What is it? He was angry, wasn’t he? Because I came?”
    “He thinks you’re jealous,” she said shortly.
    “Well, perhaps I am rather,” said George.
    She did not speak.
    “I’m sorry, dear, I really am. I didn’t mean to spoil anything for you.”
    “Well, that’s certainly that,” she remarked, and she sounded impersonally angry.
    “Why? But why should it be?”
    “He doesn’t like—having things asked of him,” she said, and he remained silent while they drove home.
    Up in the warmed, comfortable old flat, she stood before the fire, while he brought her a drink. She smoked fast and angrily, looking into the fire.
    “Please forgive me, dear,” he said at last. “What is it? Do you love him? Do you want to leave me? If you do, of course you must. Young people should be together.”
    She turned and