e, then. I'll make it worth
your while. You see.' The sightless eyes turned towards her and Bessie
saw.

'It isn't taking you out of your way?' he said hesitatingly. 'I can ask
a policeman if it is.'

'Not at all. I come on at seven and I'm off at four. That's easy hours.'

'Good God!--but I'm on all the time. I wish I had some work to do too.

Let's go home, Bess.'

He turned and cannoned into a man on the sidewalk, recoiling with an
oath. Bessie took his arm and said nothing--as she had said nothing when
he had ordered her to turn her face a little more to the light. They
walked for some time in silence, the girl steering him deftly through
the crowd.

'And where's--where's Mr. Torpenhow?' she inquired at last.

'He has gone away to the desert.'

'Where's that?'

Dick pointed to the right. 'East--out of the mouth of the river,' said
he.

'Then west, then south, and then east again, all along the under-side
of Europe. Then south again, God knows how far.' The explanation did
not enlighten Bessie in the least, but she held her tongue and looked to
Dick's patch till they came to the chambers.

'We'll have tea and muffins,' he said joyously. 'I can't tell you,
Bessie, how glad I am to find you again. What made you go away so
suddenly?'

'I didn't think you'd want me any more,' she said, emboldened by his
ignorance.

'I didn't, as a matter of fact--but afterwards--At any rate I'm glad
you've come. You know the stairs.'

So Bessie led him home to his own place--there was no one to hinder--and
shut the door of the studio.

'What a mess!' was her first word. 'All these things haven't been looked
after for months and months.'

'No, only weeks, Bess. You can't expect them to care.'

'I don't know what you expect them to do. They ought to know what you've
paid them for. The dust's just awful. It's all over the easel.'

'I don't use it much now.'

'All over the pictures and the floor, and all over your coat. I'd like
to speak to them housemaids.'

'Ring for tea, then.' Dick felt his way to the one chair he used by
custom.

Bessie saw the action and, as far as in her lay, was touched. But there
remained always a keen sense of new-found superiority, and it was in her
voice when she spoke.

'How long have you been like this?' she said wrathfully, as though the
blindness were some fault of the housemaids.

'How?'

'As you are.'

'The day after you went away with the check, almost as soon as my
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