her last grand passion.  She watched him as a mother-cat watches her kitten, without seeming to, of course, for she had much experience.  She had begun to have a curious secret jealousy of Noel though why she could not have said.  It was perhaps merely incidental to her age, or sprang from that vague resemblance between her and one who outrivalled even what she had been as a girl; or from the occasional allusions Fort made to what he called “that little fairy princess.”  Something intangible, instinctive, gave her that jealousy.  Until the death of her young cousin’s lover she had felt safe, for she knew that Jimmy Fort would not hanker after another man’s property; had he not proved that in old days, with herself, by running away from her?  And she had often regretted having told him of Cyril Morland’s death.  One day she determined to repair that error.  It was at the Zoo, where they often went on Sunday afternoons.  They were standing before a creature called the meercat, which reminded them both of old days on the veldt.  Without turning her head she said, as if to the little animal:  “Do you know that your fairy princess, as you call her, is going to have what is known as a war-baby?”

The sound of his “What!” gave her quite a stab.  It was so utterly horrified.

She said stubbornly:  “She came and told me all about it.  The boy is dead, as you know.  Yes, terrible, isn’t it?” And she looked at him.  His face was almost comic, so wrinkled up with incredulity.

“That lovely child!  But it’s impossible!”

“The impossible is sometimes true, Jimmy.”

“I refuse to believe it.”

“I tell you it is so,” she said angrily.

“What a ghastly shame!”

“It was her own doing; she said so, herself.”

“And her father—­the padre!  My God!”

Leila was suddenly smitten with a horrible doubt.  She had thought it would disgust him, cure him of any little tendency to romanticise that child; and now she perceived that it was rousing in him, instead, a dangerous compassion.  She could have bitten her tongue out for having spoken.  When he got on the high horse of some championship, he was not to be trusted, she had found that out; was even finding it out bitterly in her own relations with him, constantly aware that half her hold on him, at least, lay in his sense of chivalry, aware that he knew her lurking dread of being flung on the beach, by age.  Only ten minutes ago he had uttered a tirade before the cage of a monkey which seemed unhappy.  And now she had roused that dangerous side of him in favour of Noel.  What an idiot she had been!

“Don’t look like that, Jimmy.  I’m sorry I told you.”

His hand did not answer her pressure in the least, but he muttered: 

“Well, I do think that’s the limit.  What’s to be done for her?”

Leila answered softly:  “Nothing, I’m afraid.  Do you love me?” And she pressed his hand hard.