comparison—I felt myself turn hot and cold with shame over the false position.

[71]

I was even thankful not to have to stay in the same room with these other girls that afternoon—thankful to be able to beat a retreat to the large, light office where I took down letters from the Governor’s rapid dictation as if my whole life depended on it—thankful that he did make such claims on the whole of my attention and capabilities; thankful that the boring “dinner-partner,” who had allowed a glimpse of a slightly more human personality in the cab when he’d discussed the difference between frocks and furs, had been entirely swallowed up again in the business-employer.

As he was leaving, he gave me the last of his orders for the following day.

“I should be glad if you would have lunch with me again to-morrow.”

“Very well, Mr. Waters.”

That means another ordeal in the dressing-room, where the ill-ventilated atmosphere will again be set simmering with the unspoken—and the unspeakable. I never did think that this ten pounds a week was going to be exactly easy to earn. But I hadn’t bargained for this—This[72] is outrageous! It makes me hate everybody: Mr. Waters, to begin with, for making the proposal; Jack next, for making it necessary for me to accept it; the girls at the office here, for so hideously misconstruing the position!

[72]

My ordinary work, which had for two or three hours pushed my complicated “supernumerary duties” to the back of my mind, has come to an end, and the other thing looms well into the foreground again. I’ve walked nearly all the way back to Battersea, but that hasn’t worked off my simmering indignation even yet.

I shall spend the evening ironing out washing-ribbon and oddments in our tiny kitchen; I can’t stay with Cicely—I should only snap at her, and she would wonder why.

The one relief that I have been able to give to my feelings was when, in crossing the bridge, I tore those glorious crimson carnations (which I wouldn’t leave at the Near Oriental!) out of my coat again, and flung them far, far down into the sluggish brown waters of the river below me. How soon they were out of sight! How I wish that I could put them and everything connected with them, out of mind!

To-day, the day of my second lunch with Mr. Waters, 

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