all that one feels about a pretty woman who thinks her husband a brute, and tells one so. Confidences about one's husband's faults— and all of us have our faults-are the most telling form of flattery all over the world. I believe it is practised even among the Esquimaux. It is among my patients, I know, every day. And Skull is a scoundrel, no doubt; everybody has found that out since he turned out to be the cheated instead of the cheat, or to be a little of both mixed, any way. But what would my patients say, of whom some are quite respectable people, and what would Laura's relations and friends say, of whom all are something more than respectable, if we took to aiding and abetting a bankrupt's runaway wife-even supposing her ring to be of good metal-under the charge of a knighterrant like you, whom I know to be a good fellow, but of whom nobody else would know anything except that he is an American whom nobody knows? Scandal is bad enough for a woman, but for a physician it is Ugh! It is not to be thought of, kind or unkind; it can't be. You might as well ask me to do you a kindness by jumping down Mount Etna. It might help you, but it would kill me."

"What!

66

You are afraid—?”

Mortally afraid. I'd rather perform a delicate operation in the hail of a mitrailleuse than receive Mrs. Skull within my doors. And, Gray, I'm afraid for you, too. I've seen all this sort of thing before. If she's a bad woman, all the worse for you; if a good one, all the worse for her. You won't take my advice, of course; but I'll give it all the same. Go back to Astrakhan."

"Then you say--No?"

"Most distinctly-No. Of course I'm very sorry, but it can't be helped. Take some sherry, and see it for yourself, like a sensible man of the world."

"Then I think," said Victor hotly, "that you have shown more courage in saying 'No,' than if you had even been brave enough to give a few hours' shelter to an unhappy girl who has fallen among thieves. I always thought the Levite was a braver man than the Samaritan. I suppose I am a coward where a woman is concerned. Good day."

"Won't you stay and see Mrs. Dale?.... Well," said the doctor to himself, as soon as he had seen his visitor clear of the front door, "I don't like to see a fellow running his own head foremost against a stone wall. Only, I can't let him use me for a batteringram."

It had been all very well for Victor to speak, and to feel, scorn of

the world while in presence of the Philistines. But the doctor's words had nevertheless come upon him with more effect than upon Don Quixote used to come the prudent counsels of Sancho. He had not realised the nature of his own impulse when he left Helen; he had been forgetting, for a whole hour, that he and she lived in a world mainly composed of less tolerant Doctor Dales, who act according to the social statutes enacted by their wives. Nor could he tell himself that the world was wrong. He could not help knowing what he himself would think were he to know no more-of a like case—but that a young wife had left her husband, and had put herself under the protection of a young man and his friends. He knew what he would think of the wife, of the man, and of the friends of the man; and on whose side, if things came to a public scandal, public opinion would lie. To be told that he stood in any sort of danger from her, or she from him, was an insult to them both; but how should people know any more of her than they knew of him?

He went back to her from Dr. Dale's, indignant with circumstance and with his own helplessness, and trying to think both of what could be done for her and of what ought to be done. He found her dressed for out-of-doors, ready to go anywhere that he or anybody else might please, so long as it was from her husband's home.

"I have been obliged to put on these things," said she, "though it was he who bought them-I was going to say, who paid for them; but I suppose that would not be true. However, I will get others, and send these back to him. As for the rest-I have not carried off so much as my wedding-ring," she went on, holding out her left hand. "From this time I am Helen Reid again—I have no business even with that; but, at least, it was never given me by him. Where am I to go?"

"I-I don't know. I have tried to find you a place where you might remain as a guest for a time, but I have failed. I could cut off my right hand, I am so disappointed and troubled, but--"

"It doesn't matter. Thank you for anything you have tried to do. But I can't go upstairs and take off my things again now they are on. I must go. There are inns and lodgings still in London, I suppose."

"And how could I call upon you and see after you in lodgings and inns? And what means have you, if you leave this house with nothing but your clothes?"

"What does it signify to me who calls on call upon me in a lodging-house or an inn?

me, and whether they And why need you call,

unless you please? As to means, I am not quite so poor as you VOL. CCXLVII, NO. 1798.

D D

suppose. I have some bank-notes that were in my poor mother's desk when she died, and that I meant never to touch; but this is a case of need. I suppose they are his, according to law. But that is nothing to me. The law says I had no father, and that I have a husband; when I had a father, and have no husband. It says that my mother was not a wife, and that I am."

"That certainly does get rid of one difficulty—for a time; but--"

"For all time. When that is spent, I can make more. Before I knew him, I wondered what a penniless woman could find to do. I know better now, since there is nobody left to care what I do. There is some use in being one's own mistress, after all."

There was a recklessness in her tone that alarmed him. "What can you mean?" asked he. "If you care for yourself——” "What do you mean? I have told you already that I don't care about living, but that I do care very much about not dying for want of bread-so long as the bread is not Gideon Skull's. For example, I might do like the rest of the world, and cheat, or forge, or steal. I once had an idea, when I was a girl, of going down to Hillswick, and of making Victor Waldron marry me, instead of Gideon Skull. You see that I am not likely to starve for want of ideas-though it is too late for that now, and after all, I am not sure that it would suit me to change even Gideon Skull for him. Why do you look at me like that? Are not such things done by the best people every day?"

"You shall not talk like that. When you are in that mood, it is some demon speaking with your voice; it is not you. I am learning to know you a great deal better than you know yourself, I believe. You simply don't know what to do, and you talk all this odious and unworthy rubbish. Forgive me; but I am in a state of helpless rage with the whole world. To feel helpless is not a pleasant thing for a man."

It was

I only

"Is it much better for a woman? But-forgive me. rubbish, and it does me a little good to hear it called so. mean that I am my own mistress, and may do what I please. Of course, if I were in a novel, everything would be easy. I should have a glorious contralto voice, or be a born violinist without any teaching, or have a genius for painting, or poetry, or poison. I should have nothing to do but take one leap into fortune and fame. As things are, I have no voice, not even a soprano; the fiddle is a mystery to me; I can't draw. But when I was living alone with my mother I had to study dressmaking, and I think I know something

about it, so I might keep myself that way. Or I could find a place behind a counter. Or, if the worst came to the worst, there's always the stage

"The stage! Why"

"Why not? I have met a good many actresses at the Aristides' and elsewhere, and I don't see that most of those who do very well are a shade more fit for the stage than every woman is by the time she is one-and-twenty. I could go to Mr. Sinon-he has to do with half the theatres, I know."

66 Are you in earnest, or are you talking as you did before? Do you understand one single word you say?"

"Most seriously I mean every word. I know I could act a little if I tried; and I know that many who are quite famous can't act at all. And I should not want fame."

But he could see for himself that she was in thorough earnest this time.

"And do you mean that you don't know," he asked eagerly, "what it means when a girl who has never gone through years of drudgery gets a salary, as soon as she wants one, through the good offices of a Sinon, or of the scores like him? You don't seem to believe in novels and yet you take your ideas of the stage from them as simply as if you believed in the fiddler and the contralto. You are wrong in every way. There have been those great geniuses who have done the wonders in which you don't believe-except upon the stage. The stage is a good calling for thousands, but less for you than for any woman in the world. And when you talk of a man like Sinonwell, you show how much you know of the world."

"You mean to tell me," she said, with sudden heat, "that there is no calling on earth fit for an honest woman! Well, then, there is nothing to be said. We are no better off than men are, after all. I must do what I must, if I cannot do as I will."

"You will do what you ought," said Victor, with a frown.

"And starve?"

"And starve. Yes-starve rather than think as you are thinking now. It is only in your own fancy that you are not as good and pure in heart as a woman can be. Keep so

"And starve-in body and in soul too!"

"If I were a minister, I would preach; and you know what I would say. I'm not good enough to preach, and besides, I don't know how. . . . .”

"Mr. Gray, do you know what it is to care for nobody in the whole world?"

"No, I don't. It's impossible. Everybody cares for somebody. One would have to care for nobody but oneself next, and that would never do. I care for you."

He spoke quite simply, with no thought, and scarcely with a feeling, that did not lie upon the surface of his words. It was the need to be cared for, rather than to care for others, that he read in her words and in her tone. He could feel that she was being driven to devour herself for want of better food. What was there but one incessant "I" and "Me" in all she said, and thought, and seemed to feel? It was natural, as things were; but "I" and "Me" are demons whose greed grows with feeding. And he did care for her. Nobody but she had been in his mind for many months, and in his heart for many days.

She did not answer him. Perhaps her inner ears had become dull. She only said:

"That, surely-yes; though I am advising a wife to leave her husband's house. I will risk that-that does seem to have a right

and a wrong of its own. But, for now

"If it is wrong to remain till to-morrow, it is wrong to remain now. I have money, as I told you, and that is lucky; but if I had none, it would be the same. I will go. There is a house where my mother used to live, and where they know me. I will I will go there."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

How many ways is Love begun ?

In forty score and in forty-one

One new way for each new-lit moon

Till seventy Junes fall sere.

How many ways doth Love make end?
How many lives hath he leave to spend ?

One new way for each new-born June

That comes in a single year.

WALDRON did not feel by any means satisfied with himself when he, having seen Helen to her old lodgings, had gone back to Gideon's house to let the servants know that their mistress had left home on an urgent summons, and to leave a written message for Gideon where his wife was to be found. He could not tell whether he had been