heightened the effect of its
gentleness. In external matters, the two men knew little more of each
other now than after their first meeting, but the spiritual alliance
between them had strengthened with every conversation. Each understood
the other's outlook upon problems of life, which are not commonly
discussed in the top rooms of lodging-houses; they felt and thought
differently at times, but in essentials they were at one, and it was
the first time that either had found such fruitful companionship.

'Did you hear anything from the Peckovers of Clara Hewett?' Sidney
began by asking.

'Not from them. Jane has often spoken of her.'

Sidney again hesitated, then, from a fragmentary beginning, passed into
a detailed account of his relations with Clara. The girl herself, had
she overheard him, could not have found fault with the way in which the
story was narrated. He represented his love as from the first without
response which could give him serious hope; her faults he dealt with
not as characteristics to be condemned, but as evidences of suffering,
the outcome of cruel conditions. Her engagement at the luncheon-bar he
spoke of as a detestable slavery, which had wasted her health and
driven her in the end to an act of desperation. What now could be done
to aid her? John Hewett was still in ignorance of the step she had
taken, and Sidney described himself as distracted by conflict between
what he felt to be his duty, and fear of what might happen if he
invoked Hewett's authority. At intervals through the day he had been
going backwards and forwards in the street where Clara had her lodging.
He did not think she would seek to escape from her friends altogether,
but her character and circumstances made it perilous for her to live
thus alone.

'What does she really wish for?' inquired Snowdon, when there had been
a short silence.

'She doesn't know, poor girl! Everything in the life she has been
living is hateful to her--everything since she left school. She can't
rest in the position to which she was born; she aims at an impossible
change of circumstances. It comes from her father; she can't help
rebelling against what seem to her unjust restraints. But what's to
come of it? She may perhaps get a place in a large restaurant--and what
does that mean?'

He broke off, but in a moment resumed even more passionately:

'What a vile, cursed world this is, where you may see men and women
perish before your eyes, and no mo