And she spoke with the sincerest conviction. When Julian left her that day, he shook hands with her by the door; she stood after he had done it as if still half expectant.
"There's a man's good-bye to a man," he said. "Better sort of thing than a man's good-bye to a woman, isn't it?"
"Rather!" she said hastily, and moved back into the sitting-room. She stepped on something, and bent down to pick it up. It was Marr's photograph.
"What's that?" Julian asked.
"Nothing," she said, concealing it. She had a foolish fancy that even the photograph of the creature she had feared and hated might spoil that good-bye of theirs. Yet even as it was, when Julian had gone she still seemed unsatisfied.
She was a woman after all, and woman is most feminine in her farewells.
CHAPTER II
VALENTINE SINGS
When Valentine heard of the scene in Marylebone Road he smiled.
"How extraordinary women are," he said. "A man might give his life to them, I suppose, yet never understand them."