'And of course if I don't go home I might be a companion or look after children.'

'I wonder if Mrs Ottley--' began Aylmer. 'She has a dear little girl, and I've heard her say she would soon want someone.'

'Dilly?' said Dulcie, with a slight smile.

'Yes, Dilly.'

There was a moment of intense awkwardness between them.

Then Dulcie said:

'I'm afraid that wouldn't quite do. I'm not clever enough.'

'Oh, rot. You know enough for a child like that. I shall speak to Mrs Ottley about it.'

'It's very, very kind of you, but I would rather not. I think I shall try to be a companion.'

'What's the name of that woman,' Aylmer said good-naturedly, 'that Irish woman, wife of one of the Cabinet Ministers, who came to the hospital at Boulogne and wanted to have lessons?'

'Lady Conroy,' Dulcie answered.

'Yes, Lady Conroy. Supposing that she needed a secretary or companion, would you dislike that?'

'Oh, no, I should like it very much.'

'Right. I'll get Mrs Ottley to speak to her about it. She said she was coming to London, didn't she?'

'Yes. I got to know her fairly well,' said Dulcie. 'She's very charming.'

'She's celebrated for her bad memory,' Aylmer said, with a smile.

'She declares she forgets her own name sometimes. Once she got into a taxi and told the man to drive home. When he asked where that was, she said it was his business to know. She had forgotten her address.'

They both laughed.

'I'll go tomorrow,' said Dulcie, 'and see my stepmother, if you don't want me in the afternoon. Or, perhaps, the day you go for a drive would be better.'

'Tell me, Miss Clay, aren't you happy at home?'

'Oh, it isn't that. They don't want me. I'm in the way. You see, they've got used to my being out of the house.'

'But, excuse me--you don't earn your own living really?'

'No, that isn't really necessary. But I don't want to live at home.'

Her face showed such a decided distaste to the idea that he said no more.

'You're looking very well today,' Dulcie said.

He sighed. 'I feel rather rotten. I can't read, can't settle to anything.'

She looked at him sympathetically. He felt impelled to go on.

'I'm a bit worried,' he continued.

'About your son?'

'No, not about him so much, though I wish he would get a flesh wound and be sent back,' his father said, laughing. 'But about myself.'

She looked at him in silence.

'You know--what I told you.'

She made no answer, looking away to give him time to speak.

'I've made a suggestion,' he said slowly.... 'If it's accepted it'll alter all my life. Of course I shall go out again. But still it will alter my life.'

Suddenly, overpowered by the longing for sympathy, he said to himself aloud.

'I wonder if there's a chance.'

'I don't know what it is,' she murmured, but instinctively she had guessed something of it.

'I don't want to think about it any more at present.'

'Shall I read to you?'

'Yes, do.'

She quietly arranged a pillow behind him and took up a newspaper.

He often liked her to read to him; he never listened to a word of it, but it was soothing.

She had taken up 'This Morning's Gossip' from _The Daily Mail_, and she began in the soft, low, distinct voice reading from The Rambler:

'Lord Redesdale says that when Lord Haldane's scheme for a Territorial Army was on foot he took it to the--'

Aylmer stopped her.

'No--not that'

'Shall I read you a novel?'

'I think I should like to hear some poetry today,' he answered.

She had taken up a pretty, tiny little book that lay on his table, called _Lyrists of the Restoration_, and began to read aloud:

5165 '_Phyllis is my only joy, Faithless as the winds or seas, Sometimes cunning, sometimes coy, Yet she never fails to please_.'