LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM
was Ethel's inadequate muttered retort, unheard by the seeker after phenomena.
It was perhaps not so bad as dismissal, but it certainly lasted longer. And at home was Chaffery, grimly malignant at her failure to secure that pneumatic glove. He had no right to blame her, he really had not; but a disturbed temper is apt to falsify the scales of justice. The tambourine, he insisted, he could have explained by saying he put up his hand to catch it and protect his head directly Smithers moved. But the pneumatic glove there was no explaining. He had made a chance for her to secure it when he had pretended to faint. It was rubbish to say any one could have been looking on the table then—rubbish.
Beside that significant wreck of a pen stood a little carriage clock in a case, and this suddenly lifted a slender voice and announced five. She turned round on her stool and sat staring at the clock. She smiled with the corners of her mouth down. "Home," she said, "and begin again. It's like battledore and shuttlecock. . . .
"I was silly. . . .
"I suppose I've brought it on myself. I ought to have picked it up, I suppose. I had time. . . .
"Cheats. . . just cheats.
"I never thought I should see him again. . . .
"He was ashamed, of course. . . . He had his own friends."
For a space she sat still, staring blankly before her. She sighed, rubbed a knuckle in a reddened eye, rose.
She went into the hall where her hat, transfixed by
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