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262 "Queer idea, this, but the stuff tastes all right," she acknowledged. "I suppose, if you were taking your dear Miss Dalstan out, you'd go to a different sort of place, eh?"

"We generally go further up town," he admitted unthinkingly.

She set her glass down quickly.

"So you do take her out, do you?" she asked coldly. "You'd have been with her to-night, perhaps, if I hadn't been here?"

"Very likely."

She was half inclined to rally him, behind it all a little annoyed.

"You're a nice sort of person! Why, it's only a few months ago since you pretended to be in love with me!"

He looked at her, and her eyes fell before his.

"I don't think there was ever much question of our being in love with one another, was there? We simply seemed to have drifted together because we were both miserable, and then, as the time passed on—well, you came to be my only solace against the wretchedness of that life."

She nodded appreciatively. For a moment the sights and sounds of the noisy restaurant passed from her consciousness.

"Do you remember how glad I was to see you? How we used to spend our holidays out in those dingy fields and hope and pray for better things some day? But it was all so hopeless, wasn't it! You could barely keep yourself from starving, and I—oh, the misery of that awful Detton Magna and teaching those wretched children! There never were