utstretched hands, and he was bewildered,
for she had not smiled upon him like this once during that long journey
to London.

"So it is I who have had to come to you," she exclaimed, taking his
hands in hers. "May I sit down and talk for a little while? I am so
glad--every one is glad--that you are better."

He laughed, a little oddly.

"Every one? Why I could count on the fingers of one hand the people
with whom I have spoken since I came to London."

She nodded.

"Yes," she said, "but to-day you could not count in an hour the people
who know you. You are very fortunate. You have made a wonderful start.
You have got over all your difficulties so easily."

"So easily?" He smiled again and then shuddered. She looked into his
face, and she too felt like shuddering.

"You do not know," he said. "No one will ever know what it is like--to
go under--to be saved as it were by a miracle."

"You suffered, I know," she murmured, "but you gained a wonderful
experience."

"You do not understand," he said, in a low tone. "No one will ever
understand."

"You could have saved yourself so much," she said regretfully, "if you
had kept your promise to come and see me.

"I could not," he answered. "I lost your address. It went into the
Thames with an old coat the very night I reached London. But for that I
should have come and begged from you."

"You would have made me famous," she answered laughing. "I should have
claimed the merit of discovering you."

He looked puzzled.

"Of course you know," she said, "how every one has been reading those
wonderful articles of yours in the Courier? You are very fortunate.
You have made a reputation at one sitting."

He shook his head.

"A fleeting one, I am afraid. I can understand those articles seeming
lifelike. You see I wrote them almost literally with my blood. It was
my last effort. I was starving, poisoned with horrors, sick to death of
the brutality of life."

"Things had gone so hardly with you then?" she murmured.

He nodded.

"From the first. I came to London as an adventurer, it is true. I knew
no one, and I had no money. But the editor of the _Ibex_ had written me
kindly, had accepted a story and asked for more. Yet when I went to see
him he seemed to have forgotten or repented. He would not give me a
hearing. Even the story he had accepted he told me he could not use for
a long time--and I was relying upon the money for that. That was the
beginning of my ill-lu