She drew a long and desperate breath.

"Oh, for goodness sake don't let's argue!"

He refrained. But after a moment he added, still more gravely--"And I do protest--most strongly!--against the influence upon you of the lady you have taken to live with you!"

Delia made a vehement movement.

"She is my friend!--my dearest friend!" she said, in a shaky voice.

"And I believe in her, and admire her with all my heart!"

"I know--and I am sorry. Her speech this evening--all the latter part of it--was the speech of an Anarchist. And the first half was a tissue of misstatements. I happen to know something about the facts she dealt with."

"Of course you take a different view!"

"I _know_," he said, quietly--a little sternly. "Miss Marvell either does not know, or she wilfully misrepresents."

"You can't prove it!"

"I think I could. And as to that man--Mr. Lathrop--but you know what I think."

They both fell silent. Through all his own annoyance and disgust, Winnington was sympathetically conscious of what she too must be feeling--chafed and thwarted, at every turn, by his legal power over her actions, and by the pressure of his male will. He longed to persuade her, convince her, soothe her; but what chance for it, under the conditions she had chosen for her life?

The motor drew up at the door of the Abbey, and Winnington turned on the light.

"I am afraid I can't help you out. Can you manage?"

She stooped anxiously to look at his wrist.

"It's bleeding worse again! I am sure I could improve that bandage. Do come in. My maid's got everything."

He hesitated--then followed her into the house. The maid was summoned, and proved an excellent nurse. The wound was properly bandaged, and the arm put in a sling.

Then, as the maid withdrew, Delia and her guardian were left standing together in the drawing-room, lit only by a dying gleam of fire, and a single lamp.

"Good-night," said Winnington, gently. "Don't be the least alarmed about Miss Marvell. The train doesn't arrive for ten minutes yet. Thank you for looking after me so kindly."

Delia laughed--but it was a sound of distress.

Suddenly he stooped, lifted her hand, and kissed it.

"What you are doing seems to me foolish--and _wrong!_ I am afraid I must tell you so plainly," he said, with emotion. "But although I feel like that--my one wish--all the time--is--forgive me if it sounds patronising!--to help you--and stand by you. To see you in that horrid business to-night--made me--very unhappy. I am old-fashioned I suppose--but I could hardly bear it. I wish I could make you trust me a little!"

"I do!" she said, choked. "I do--but I must follow my conscience."

He shook his head, but said no more. She murmured good-night, and he went. She heard the motor drive away, and remained standing where he had left her, the hand he had kissed hanging at her side. She still felt the touch of his lips upon it, and as the blood rushed into her cheeks, her heart was conscious of new and strange emotions. She longed to go to him as a sister or a daughter might, and say--"Forgive me--understand me--don't despair of me!"

The trance of feeling broke, and pa.s.sed away. She caught up a cloak and went to the hall door to listen for Gertrude Marvell.

"What I _shall_ have to say to him before long, is--'I have tricked you this quarter out of 500--and I mean to do it again next quarter--if I can!' He won't want to kiss my hand again!"

Chapter X

Two men sat smoking and talking with Paul Lathrop in the hook-littered sitting-room of his cottage. One was a young journalist, Roger Blaydes, whose thin, close-shaven face wore the knowing fool's look of one to whom the world's his oyster, and all the bricks for opening it familiar. The other was a G.o.d-like creature, a poet by profession, with long lantern-jaws, grey eyes deeply set, and a ma.s.s of curly black hair, from which the face with its pallor and its distinction, shone dimly out like the portrait of a Cinquecento. Lathrop, in a kind of dressing-gown, as clumsily cut as the form it wrapped, his reddish hair and large head catching the firelight, had the look of one lazily at bay, as wrapped in a cloud of smoke, he twined from one speaker to the other.

"So you were at another of these meetings last night?" said Blaydes, with a mouth half smiling, half contemptuous.

"Yes. A disgusting failure! They didn't even take the trouble to pelt us." The poet--Merian by name--moved angrily on his chair. Blaydes threw a sly look at him, as he knocked the ash from his cigarette.

"And what the deuce do you expect to get by it all?"

Paul Lathrop paused a moment--and at last said with a lift of the eyebrows:--

"Well!--I have no illusions!"

Merian broke out indignantly--

"I say, Lathrop--why should you try and play up to that cynic there? As if he ever had an illusion about anything!"

"Well, but one may have faith without illusions," protested Blaydes, with hard good temper.

"I doubt whether Lathrop has an ounce of either!"

Lathrop reached out for a match.

"What's the good of 'faith'--and what does anyone mean by it?

Sympathies--and animosities: they're enough for me."

"And you really are in sympathy with these women?" said the other.

The tone was incredulous. Merian brought his hand violently down on the table.

"Don't you talk about them, Blaydes! I tell you, they're out of your ken."

"I daresay," said Blaydes, composedly. "I was only trying to get at what Lathrop means by going into the business."

Paul Lathrop sat up.

"I'm in sympathy with anything that hara.s.ses, and bothers and stings the governing cla.s.ses of this country!" he said, with an oratorical wave of his cigarette. "What fools they are! In this particular business the Government is an a.s.s, the public is an a.s.s, the women, if you like, are a.s.ses. So long as they don't destroy works of art that appeal to me, I prefer to bray with them than with their enemies."

Merian rose impatiently--a slim, dark-browed St. George towering over the other two.

"After that, I'd rather hear them attacked by Blaydes, than defended by you, Lathrop!" he said with energy, as he b.u.t.toned up his coat.

Lathrop threw him a cool glance.