Paul goes up to her. 'Philippa, my dear,' he says very gently, 'there is something very wrong, can't you tell me why Jimmy went away—'
'No, no,' she sobs. 'I told him to go, but I can't tell you why—'
'How cold you are,' he says. 'Stop crying and go to bed at once, or you will make yourself ill.'
'Very well,' replies she, meekly. 'But you [sob] you won't tell Mabel—'
'I won't tell a soul.'
'And you're not vexed with me?'
'No; why should I be. Good-night.'
'Good-night,' such a sad little face she turns to him, that he stoops and kisses it.
'What a child she is,' he thinks, as he watches her down the passage. 'I wonder what induced her to throw Jimmy over. Couldn't have been better off as regards a husband. Money! as if that would ever enter into her head. Can't make it out at all. She likes him I can see.'
For some time, Paul puzzles his handsome head about Philippa, and then when sleep has come, he dreams of the woman he loved; she to whom he gave his love, his faith, his all, only to be abused; the woman who has blighted his life. Oh! it is a strange world. It is like a puzzle that everyone tries to make, but does not succeed because the principal parts are missing. Will they ever be found, the missing links, the pieces of the puzzle, the answer to the 'whys' and 'wherefores?'