“Let me get my hat and coat—­let me take you to a doctor,” he muttered.

But she refused.  She refused even the support of his arm.  She gave another unsteady laugh.

“I’m sorry I broke your stairs, Paul....  You will go and see about the short stories, won’t you?”

He groaned.

“Then if you won’t see a doctor, will you go across the square and let Mrs. Barrett look at you?  Look, there’s Barrett passing now—­”

The long-nosed Barrett was looking curiously down the alley, but as Oleron was about to call him he made off without a word.  Elsie seemed anxious for nothing so much as to be clear of the place, and finally promised to go straight to a doctor, but insisted on going alone.

“Good-bye,” she said.

And Oleron watched her until she was past the hatchet-like “To Let” boards, as if he feared that even they might fall upon her and maim her.

That night Oleron did not dine.  He had far too much on his mind.  He walked from room to room of his flat, as if he could have walked away from Elsie Bengough’s haunting cry that still rang in his ears.  “I’m not wanted—­don’t offer me anything less—­let me take away what’s left of me—­”

Oh, if he could only have persuaded himself that he loved her!

He walked until twilight fell, then, without lighting candles, he stirred up the fire and flung himself into a chair.

Poor, poor Elsie!...

But even while his heart ached for her, it was out of the question.  If only he had known!  If only he had used common observation!  But those walks, those sisterly takings of the arm—­what a fool he had been!...  Well, it was too late now.  It was she, not he, who must now act—­act by keeping away.  He would help her all he could.  He himself would not sit in her presence.  If she came, he would hurry her out again as fast as he could....  Poor, poor Elsie!

His room grew dark; the fire burned dead; and he continued to sit, wincing from time to time as a fresh tortured phrase rang again in his ears.

Then suddenly, he knew not why, he found himself anxious for her in a new sense—­uneasy about her personal safety.  A horrible fancy that even then she might be looking over an embankment down into dark water, that she might even now be glancing up at the hook on the door, took him.  Women had been known to do those things....  Then there would be an inquest, and he himself would be called upon to identify her, and would be asked how she had come by an ill-healed wound on the hand and a bad abrasion of the ankle.  Barrett would say that he had seen her leaving his house....

Then he recognised that his thoughts were morbid.  By an effort of will he put them aside, and sat for a while listening to the faint creakings and tickings and rappings within his panelling....  If only he could have married her!...  But he couldn’t.  Her face had risen before him again as he had seen it on the stairs, drawn with pain and ugly and swollen with tears.  Ugly—­yes, positively blubbered; if tears were women’s weapons, as they were said to be, such tears were weapons turned against themselves ... suicide again....