II

IN the long, dark room where Dudley Leicester still sprawled in his deep chair, Katya stopped Robert Grimshaw near the door.

“I’ll ask him to ask you his question,” she said, “and you’ll answer it in as loud a voice as you can. That’ll cure him. You’ll see. I don’t suppose you expected to see me here.”

“I didn’t expect it,” he answered, “but I know why you have come.”

“Well,” she said, “if he isn’t cured, you’ll be hanging round him for ever.”

“Yes, I suppose I shall be hanging round him for ever,” he answered.

“And more than that, you’ll be worrying yourself to death over it. I can’t bear you to worry, Toto,” she said. She paused for a long minute and then she scrutinized him closely.

“So it was you who rang him up on the telephone?” she said. “I thought it was, from the beginning.”

“Oh, don’t let’s talk about that any more,” Grimshaw said; “I’m very tired; I’m very lonely. I’ve discovered that there are things one can’t do—that I’m not the man I thought I was. It’s you who are strong and get what you want, and I’m only a meddler who muddles and spoils. That’s the moral of the whole thing. Take me on your own terms and make what you can of me. I am too lonely to go on alone any more. I’ve come to give myself up. I went down to Brighton to give myself up to you on condition that you cured Dudley Leicester. Now I just do it without any conditions whatever.”

She looked at him a little ironically, a little tenderly.

“Oh, well, my dear,” she said, “we’ll talk about that when he’s cured. Now come.”

She made him stand just before Leicester’s sprawled-out feet, and going round behind the chair, resting her hands already on Leicester’s hair in preparation for bending down to make, near his ear, the suggestion that he should put his question, she looked up at Robert Grimshaw.

“You consent,” she said, with hardly a touch of triumph in her voice, “that I should live with you as my mother lived with my father?” And at Robert Grimshaw’s minute gesture of assent: “Oh, well, my dear,” she continued quite gently, “it’s obvious to me that you’re more than touched by this little Pauline of ours. I don’t say that I resent it. I don’t suggest that it makes you care for me any less than you should or did, but I’m sure, perfectly sure, of the fact such as it is, and I’m sure, still more sure, that she cares extremely for you. So that ...” She had been looking down at Dudley Leicester’s forehead, but she looked up again into Robert Grimshaw’s eyes. “I think, my dear,” she said slowly, “as a precaution, I think you cannot have me on those terms; I think you had better”—she paused for the fraction of a minute—“marry me,” and her fingers began to work slowly upon Dudley Leicester’s brows. There was the least flush upon her cheeks, the least smile round the corners of her lips, she heaved the ghost of a sigh.

“So that you get me both ways,” Robert Grimshaw said; and his hands fell desolately open at his side.

“Every way and altogether,” she answered.