III. ADVICE TO THE YOUNG BEAUTY

“COME, COME NOW, NOW POOR girl! You surely aren’t crying like this because you’ve been kept away from your dance to-night?”

Lilian gave a great start, and an “Oh!” and, searching hurriedly for a handkerchief inadequate to the damming of torrents, dried up her tears at the source, but could not immediately control the sobs that continued to convulse her whole frame.

“N-no! Mr. Grig,” she whimpered feebly.

Then she snatched at a sheet of paper and began to insert it in the machine before her, as though about to start some copying.

“Miss Grig is rather unwell,” said Felix Grig. “She insisted that I should come up, and so I came.” With that he tactfully left the room, obeying the wise rule of conduct under which a man conquers a woman’s weeping by running away from it.

Lilian’s face was red; it went still redder. She was tremendously ashamed of being caught blubbering, and by Mr. Grig! It would not have mattered if one of the girls had surprised her, or even Miss Grig. But Mr. Grig! Nor would it have mattered so much if circumstances had made possible any pretence, however absurd and false, that she was not in fact crying. But she had been trapped beyond any chance of a face-saving lie. She felt as though she had committed a sexual impropriety and could never look Mr. Grig in the eyes again. At the same time she was profoundly relieved that somebody belonging to the office, and especially a man, had arrived to break her awful solitude....

So Mr. Grig knew that she had a dance that night! There was something piquant and discomposing in that. Gertie Jackson must have chattered to Miss Grig—they were as thick as thieves, those two, or, at any rate, the good-natured Gertie flattered herself that they were—and Miss Grig must have told Felix. (Very discreetly the girls would refer among themselves to