feelings had, in fact, been deeply wounded by his daughter's behavior, and though for the first time in months he had been able to put on his slippers without having to hold up a noisy game while they were being looked for, he was not at all grateful.

"I've had my supper," Norah informed him, brightly.

This really annoyed Mr. Caffyn extremely, for he had been looking forward to telling his daughter that her supper had been kept waiting until ten o'clock, when it had finally been removed in order to allow the servants to go to bed. At this moment Mrs. Caffyn, who had hurried down-stairs to the kitchen as soon as she heard Norah coming, arrived in the dining-room with a tray.

"She's had her supper," said Mr. Caffyn, indignantly.

"Oh, I was afraid—" his wife began.

"Oh no, she's had her supper," said Mr. Caffyn. "Good Heavens! I don't know what the world's coming to!"

Since her father was making a cosmic affair of her behavior in going out to supper without leave, Norah decided to give him something to worry about in earnest, and, seating herself in the arm-chair on the other side of the fireplace, she prepared to argue with him. Mrs. Caffyn began to murmur about going to bed and talking things over when father came back from the office to-morrow, but Norah waved aside all procrastination.

"I want to talk about my engagement," she began.

Roland, who had just reached the door, stopped. Wilfred Curlew was a friend of his; in fact, it was he who had first brought him to the house, and though he knew that anything in the nature of an engagement between him and one of his sisters was ridiculous, he hoped that a soothing testimony from him would prevent Wilfred's final exclusion from the family circle.

"Norah, dear child, it isn't nice to begin playing jokes upon your father at this hour, especially when he isn't very pleased with you," Mrs. Caffyn said, waving her eyes in the direction of the door.

"I'm not at all sleepy," said Norah, coldly. "And I'm not joking. I want to know if father is going to let Wilfred and me be openly engaged?" she persisted, holding up her left hand so that the gaslight illuminated the ring upon the third finger.

"And who may Wilfred be?" demanded Mr. Caffyn.

This seemed to Roland a suitable moment for his intervention, and, though he had for some time been aware that his father was growing impatient of their habitual visitor, he pretended to accept this attitude of Olympian ignorance and reminded him that Wilfred was a friend who sometimes came in during the evening.

"You said once, if you remember, that he was rather a clever fellow. As a matter of fact he's doing well, you know, considering that he's not long gone in for journalism. He's just been taken on the staff of the Evening Herald. He's been doing that murder in Kentish Town."

Mr. Caffyn rose from his chair and with an elaborate assumption of irony inquired if his daughter proposed to engage herself on the strength of a murder in Kentish Town. Norah had got up when her father did and was listening with a contemptuous expression while he dilated on the folly of long engagements.

"Yes, but I don't intend it to be a long engagement," Norah proclaimed, when he paused for a moment to chew his heavy mustache. "I intend to get married."

Mr. Caffyn swung round upon his heels and faced his daughter.

"This, I suppose, is the result of the education I've given you. Insolence and defiance! Don't say another word or you'll make me lose my temper. Not another word. Norah, I insist on silence. Do you hear me? You have grievously disappointed my fondest hopes. I have not been a strict father. Indeed, I have been too indulgent. But I never imagined my daughter capable of a folly like this. If I'd thought, twenty-one years ago, when I bought this house with the idea of creating a happy home for you all, that I should be repaid like this I would have.... I would have...."

But Mr. Caffyn's apodosis was never divulged, because, seized with an access of rage, he turned out the gas and hurried from the room. In the hall he shouted back to know if his wife was going to sit up all night. Mrs. Caffyn hurried after her husband as fast as she was able across the darkened room.

"I'm coming, dear, now. Yes, dear, I'm coming now. Ouch! My knee!... I'm sure Norah will be more sensible in the morning," she was heard murmuring on her way up-stairs.

"I suppose he thinks I shall go on living with him forever," exclaimed Norah, savagely throwing herself down into her father's arm-chair. "In my opinion most parents are fit to be only children. Light the gas again, Roland; I want to write a note to Wilfred."

III

By the time morning was come Norah had decided that she would rather go on the stage than be engaged to Wilfred Curlew. The extraordinary thing was that she should never have realized, before her conversation with Mr. Vavasour, how obviously the stage was indicated as the right career for her. It was true that she had never until now seriously contemplated a career, and the mild way she had accepted herself merely as the most important member of a large family was sufficient answer to the silly accusations made by her father last night. Perhaps he would begin to appreciate her now when he was on the point of losing her; perhaps he would regret that he had ever suggested she was indifferent to the claims of family life; in future she should take care to be indifferent to everybody's feelings except her own; she would teach her father a lesson. It never entered Norah's head that there would be any difficulty about going on the stage apart from paternal opposition, and she wondered how many famous people had owed their careers to a fortuitous event like her meeting with Mr. Vavasour. At any rate, it would not be more difficult to obtain her father's permission to embark on this suddenly conceived adventure than it would be to obtain his permission to wear on the third finger of her left hand the rather cheap ring that was the outward sign of her intention to marry Wilfred. Confronted by the two alternatives—success in the theater and matrimony with Wilfred—she felt that success was much the less remote of the two; in fact, the more she thought about it the farther away receded matrimony and the more clearly defined became success. "I don't want to be a great actress," she explained to herself; "I want to be a successful actress." She half made up her mind to go out and talk to Lily about the new project, but on second thoughts she decided not to alarm her parents by any prospect so definite as would be implied in availing herself of the practical assistance that Lily and her mother could afford her in carrying out her plan. It would be more tactful to present as alternatives the definite fact of being engaged to Wilfred or the indefinite idea of being able some time or other in the future to adopt the stage as a profession. The more Norah thought about Wilfred the less in love with him she felt, and the less in love with him she felt the easier would be her task to-night. In her note she had told him to come in after supper, as usual, but she had not said a word about her intention to precipitate their affair. Would it impress her father if she and Wilfred were to meet him at the station and approach the subject before supper? No, on the whole, she decided, it would be more prudent to provoke the final scene otherwise, and her heart quickened slightly at the thought of the surprise she was going to spring upon the family that evening.

Norah was unusually pleasant to everybody all day: she gave Vincent some sweets that she did not like herself; she offered to take Gladys and Marjorie for a walk in Kensington Gardens, because a rumor had reached her of a wonderful display of hats in one of the big shops in Kensington High Street. She noticed that when her father came back from the office he seemed to have forgotten about