ourse I do. I wonder if you can realise how utterly lonely I am!'

'Darling, I think I can.'

'Two years ago, when I first took the little house, I used to walk up
and down the back-garden trying to cry. I never can cry. Can you?'

'It's some time since I tried. What was the trouble? Overwork?'

'I don't know; but I used to dream that I had broken down, and had no
money, and was starving in London. I thought about it all day, and it
frightened me--oh, how it frightened me!'

'I know that fear. It's the most terrible of all. It wakes me up in the
night sometimes. You oughtn't to know anything about it.'

'How do you know?'

'Never mind. Is your three hundred a year safe?'

'It's in Consols.'

'Very well. If any one comes to you and recommends a better
investment,--even if I should come to you,--don't you listen. Never
shift the money for a minute, and never lend a penny of it,--even to the
red-haired girl.'

'Don't scold me so! I'm not likely to be foolish.'

'The earth is full of men who'd sell their souls for three hundred a
year; and women come and talk, and borrow a five-pound note here and a
ten-pound note there; and a woman has no conscience in a money debt.

Stick to your money, Maisie, for there's nothing more ghastly in the
world than poverty in London. It's scared me. By Jove, it put the fear
into me! And one oughtn't to be afraid of anything.'

To each man is appointed his particular dread,--the terror that, if he
does not fight against it, must cow him even to the loss of his manhood.
Dick's experience of the sordid misery of want had entered into the
deeps of him, and, lest he might find virtue too easy, that memory stood
behind him, tempting to shame, when dealers came to buy his wares. As
the Nilghai quaked against his will at the still green water of a lake
or a mill-dam, as Torpenhow flinched before any white arm that could cut
or stab and loathed himself for flinching, Dick feared the poverty he
had once tasted half in jest. His burden was heavier than the burdens of
his companions.

Maisie watched the face working in the moonlight.

'You've plenty of pennies now,' she said soothingly.

'I shall never have enough,' he began, with vicious emphasis. Then,
laughing, 'I shall always be three-pence short in my accounts.'

'Why threepence?'

'I carried a man's bag once from Liverpool Street Station to
Blackfriar's Bridge. It was a sixpenny job,--you needn't laugh; indeed
it was,--and I w