Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/379

THE PAPERS up, as at the end of their story, but they stood a moment while he waited for change. "If it comes out," the girl dropped, "that will save him. If he's dishonoured—as I see her—she'll have him, because then he won't be ridiculous. And I can understand it."

Bight looked at her in such appreciation that he forgot, as he pocketed it, to glance at his change. "Oh, you creatures!"

"Idiots, aren't we?"

Bight let the question pass, but still with his eyes on her. "You ought to want him to be dishonoured."

"I can't want him, then—if he's to get the good of it—to be dead."

Still for a little he looked at her. "And if you're to get the good?" But she had turned away, and he went with her to the door, before which, when they had passed out, they had in the side-street, a backwater to the flood of the Strand, a further sharp colloquy. They were alone, the small street for a moment empty, and they felt at first that they had adjourned to a greater privacy, of which, for that matter, he took prompt advantage. "You're to lunch again with the man of the flat?"

"Wednesday, as I say; 1.45."

"Then oblige me by stopping away."

"You don't like it?" Maud asked.

"Oblige me, oblige me," he repeated.

"And disoblige him?"

"Chuck him. We've started him. It's enough."

Well, the girl but wanted to be fair. "It's you who started him; so I admit you're quits."

"That then started you—made Brains repent; so you see what you both owe me. I let the creature off, but I hold you to your debt. There's only one way for you to meet it." And then as she but looked into the roaring Strand: "With worship." It made her, after a minute, meet his eyes, but something just then occurred 367