“Is this any use?” she asked.

Oliver stood up. He could not bear the hardness of her voice.

“Mabel, my darling—-”

For an instant her lips shook; then again she looked at him with eyes of ice.

“I don’t want that,” she said. “It is of no use. Then you did sign it?”

Oliver had a sense of miserable desperation as he looked back at her. He would infinitely have preferred that she had stormed and wept.

“Mabel—-” he cried again.

“Then you did sign it?”

“I did sign it,” he said at last.

She turned and went towards the door. He sprang after her.