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turns the corner, it might be Wednesday or Thursday.”
    â€œIt’s Saturday now,” reflected Martha.
    â€œIt’s going to be pretty beastly, all by myself in the flat,” meditated Eric.
    A third bus churned up unheeded.
    â€œDon’t you know anyone else to have?” asked Martha.
    â€œEven if I did, I wouldn’t want them,” said Eric, “with my mother so worried and my grandfather so ill.”
    If the spirit of Paris might have found this rather an odd way of asking Martha to go to bed with him again, Martha herself understood perfectly. Like her lover, she sprang from a class in which passion is always respectably masked; and indeed yielded to his amorous plea in terms no less oblique.
    â€œWell, if you’ve got an alarm-clock,” said Martha. “Because I’d have to be home by ten.”
    3
    â€œDo you mind if I’m out again to-morrow?” asked Martha, back in the rue de Vaugirard. Thick-skinned as she was even Martha had realized that she couldn’t cut a meal practically on table without offending Madame Dubois quite uncommonly—perhaps even to the point of active interferingness. “Just for dinner,” added Martha, “I’ll be back by ten.”
    â€œSo one would hope!” snapped Madame Dubois.—“Your friend Mrs. Taylor again in need of a masseuse?” she enquired ironically. “She should be in a hospital!”
    Martha with complete lack of conscience directed a suborning glance across the table at Angèle.—The latter responded loyally.
    â€œHave you not said yourself, Maman, Martha is deep in Mrs. Taylor’s debt? Now is her chance to repay.”
    â€œAnd for how long is she to repay?” retorted Madame Dubois. “Until the Ides of March?”
    â€œNo; just for a day or two until she does go into hospital,” said Martha resourcefully. “She’s so bad she has to have a thorough examination. She’s just waiting for a bed.”
    There was always something very convincing about Martha’s lies. Her general aspect of respectability promoted belief. If Madame Dubois hesitated, it was not from any doubt as to the facts. She simply felt that Mr. Joyce would hardly approve what must evidently be a distraction from his protégée’s rightful studies. On the other hand, how Martha ate! To so economical a housekeeper, the absence of that splendid appetite from the dinner-table appealed strongly. “After all,” thought Madame Dubois, “Monsieur Joyce left no particular instruction; and if the child (who knows him better than we do) fears his displeasure, she will not tell him.” Thus reasoning, and with the good motive furnished by Angèle, Madame Dubois gave way.
    â€œVery well, I permit you!” said Madame Dubois crossly. “But if your Mrs. Taylor is too suffering to prepare a meal, do not come to me for tartines, in the middle of the night!”

Chapter Eight
    Actually Eric fed Martha—on the Sunday, and then the Monday, and then the Tuesday—rather well. In the absence of his mother he explored the Parisian charcuteries; even took such expert advice, this was when Martha acquired her taste for pâté de foie gras. But they always ate rather fast, to get all the sooner into bed.
    As Martha had suspected, it got better and better.—Apart from all else, no illicit amour was ever more comfortably quartered. Martha and Eric had the apartment to themselves, secure in privacy; while the fact that it didn’t in the least resemble a love-nest was a positive advantage. A pink satin bedhead and white bearskin rugs would have put Eric off; whereas in such thoroughly domesticated surroundings he could feel, as he needed to, domestic. “We might be married already!” Eric sometimes paused to exclaim. “Oh Martha, if only you hadn’t to go home!”
    This was the only fly in their ointment, that when the alarm-clock