She bowed her head and said nothing.

Gertie presented a very unusual appearance this evening.  Certainly she had laid out the two-pound-ten to advantage.  She was in a perfectly decent dark dress with a red stripe in it; she had a large hat and some species of boa round her neck; she even carried a cheap umbrella with a sham silver band and a small hand-bag with one pocket-handkerchief inside it.  And to her own mind, no doubt, she was a perfect picture of the ideal penitent—­very respectable and even prosperous looking, and yet with a dignified reserve.  She was not at all flaunting, she must have thought; neither was she, externally, anything of a disgrace.  It would be evident presently to her mother that she had returned out of simple goodness of heart and not at all because her recent escapade had been a failure.  She would still be able to talk of “the Major” with something of an air, and to make out that he treated her always like a lady. (When I went to interview her a few months ago I found her very dignified, very self-conscious, excessively refined and faintly reminiscent of fallen splendor; and her mother told me privately that she was beginning to be restless again and talked of going on to the music-hall stage.)

But there is one thing that I find it very hard to forgive, and that is, that as the two went together under the flaming white lights towards Chiswick High Street, she turned to Frank a little nervously and asked him if he would mind walking just behind her. (Please remember, however, in extenuation, that Gertie’s new pose was that of the Superior Young Lady.)

“I don’t quite like to be seen—­” murmured this respectable person.

“Oh, certainly!” said Frank, without an instant’s hesitation.

* * * * *

They had met, half an hour before, by appointment, at the entrance to the underground station at Victoria.  Frank’s van-journeyings would, he calculated, bring him there about half-past six, and, strictly against the orders of his superiors, but very ingeniously, with the connivance of his fellow-driver of the van, he had arranged for his place to be taken on the van for the rest of the evening by a man known to his fellow-driver—­but just now out of work—­for the sum of one shilling, to be paid within a week.  He was quite determined not to leave Gertie alone again, when once the journey to Chiswick had actually begun, until he had seen her landed in her own home.

The place of meeting, too, had suited Gertie very well.  She had left Turner Road abruptly, without a word to anyone, the instant that the Major’s military-looking back had been seen by her to pass within the swing-doors of the “Queen’s Arms” for his usual morning refreshment.  Then she had occupied herself chiefly by collecting her various things at their respective shops, purchased by Frank’s two-pound-ten, and putting them on.  She had had a clear threepence to spare beyond the