But I've got to stay." Dickson groaned.

What had become of his dream of idylls, his gentle bookish romance?
Vanished before a reality which smacked horribly of crude melodrama and possibly of sordid crime.

His gorge rose at the picture, but a thought troubled him.

Perhaps all romance in its hour of happening was rough and ugly like this, and only shone rosy in retrospect.

Was he being false to his deepest faith?
"Let's have Mrs.Morran in," he ventured.