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Richard Milne's impelling desperation would no longer be kept within bounds. He seemed to find her plea unanswerable as she had his. He rose from the seat. His voice quivered. A fear that they were cutting themselves off from each other as they had done before did not suffice to temper his embittered discomfiture, which he scarcely cloaked in polite circumstantiality.

'It is late and I must not keep you, Ada. We must talk again,' he added with a perverse effort at balance. He was facing the window giving on the dark room; across it he saw the crack of light under the door, which showed that life went on in the rear portions of the house. 'I hope my intrusion hasn't kept your mother too long from her bulbs.' To this irrepressible malice in jejune and childish politeness Ada made a vague gesture and rose as he went on: 'I am going to have a talk with your parents. They, too, may not be able to understand reason and common logic, but at least they shall listen. It is late now, and I shall not disturb them.'