his waistcoat pocket without his showing the slightest sign of interest in what she was doing; he seemed to be mumbling something, for his lips were moving, but it was impossible to make out what he said.

"Now then, my funny friend, you'd better pull yourself together; we're going to part--try to look as if you were sober, if you aren't."

She tapped at the window; the carriage stopped; she opened the door and descended.

"This way, please." Taking him by the arm she drew him towards her, he yielding with the old, uncomfortable docility. Somehow he joined her on the pavement. "You've left your hat behind you, you can't go about London without a hat." Picking it up from the floor of the carriage, she placed it on his head. "That's not straight; there, that's better. What a helpless child it is! Sorry I can't stop, but I've another engagement; pleased to have met you; glad to have been able to do you a good turn."

She was re-entering the carriage with a smile again upon her face, when the man who had acted as Beaton's valet came round from the back and stood beside her; at sight of him her smile vanished. He raised his hat to Beaton.

"I also am pleased to have met you." He turned to the woman. "I think, if you don't mind, or even if you do, that we'll keep that engagement together. After you into the carriage."

Evidently she found the sight of him by no means gratifying.

"What's the meaning of this? What are you doing here? I thought it was agreed that you should wait for me till I came back."

"I had a sort of idea that I might keep on waiting; it even struck me as just possible that you might never come back at all. After you into the carriage."

She hesitated; looked as if she would like to refuse; then, with a laugh, which was hardly a happy one, she did as he suggested. He followed her; the door was shut; the carriage drove off. Sydney Beaton was left standing on the pavement; oblivious of what was taking place, of where he was; as incapable, just then, of taking care of himself as any inmate of an asylum. He remained standing where they had left him, swaying to and fro. The fog had thickened; a drizzling rain had begun to fall. It was not easy to make out where he was, but he was at the corner of a street, in what seemed to be an old-world square, which in that moment was as deserted as if all the houses round about it had been 

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