etiquette which forbids it. It seems I am one of those men of whom a woman asks nothing, another symptom of the disease which I forgot to tell my doctor.

You may imagine, then, what I felt when this girl came out of nowhere and asked me to pay her cab fare home. My hand went straight to my pocket. She might have asked so many things other than that. She might have asked for a new hat. Her own was sodden with rain.

"Well, what is the cab fare?" said I. "Where do you live?"

I said it all in the voice of one who is in two ways about what he is doing. You see, I had to make something to my credit out of the business. She had asked for so very little. Even when she told me it was Bloomsbury way, I felt a sense of disappointment. It might as well have been Highgate or Clapham Junction. But in this world, whether or not it be true that you want little, little it is most surely that you get. How long you get it for is another matter. It did not interest me then.

I looked up and down the street.

"You won't find the fare so difficult to get as the cab," said I. The whole street was empty. She peered out of the shadow, and I could see she must be wet to the skin.

"Look here," I continued, "come under this umbrella. I live just here. You'd better sit indoors while I get them to whistle for a 'taxi.'"

She stood quite still for a moment and stared at me. A foolish thing to do. Women behave ridiculously at times. It was the only obvious thing to suggest, and yet she gazed at me as though I could not possibly be aware of what I was saying. I was aware.

"Be good enough to come under this umbrella," I repeated, severely. Then she obeyed.

As we walked along in silence to my door, I began to see myself that there were two aspects to the case. I had forgotten for the moment my man. He would be waiting up for me. He always does. There are little things, and Moxon knows how to do them. I have come to believe he likes it. But would he like this?

"Oh, Moxon be damned," said I, and, of course, I must have said it out loud, for she asked me sympathetically who Moxon was.

"He looks after me," I replied.

I think that must have almost confirmed the opinion in her that I was not quite sane; that Moxon, indeed, was my 

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