s wants money, but so it is. You don't contradict
me?"

Eve remained mute, her head bent.

"What about your friend and you in the future? Are you bound to this
friend in any irredeemable way?"

"No--I am not," she answered, with emotion.

"There's nothing between you but--let us call it mere friendship."

"Nothing--nothing!"

"So far, so good." He looked keenly into her face. "But how about the
future?"

"There will never be anything more--there can't be."

"Let us say that you think so at present. Perhaps I don't feel quite so
sure of it. I say again, it's nothing to me, unless I get drawn into it
by you yourself. I am not your guardian. If I tell you to be careful,
it's an impertinence. But the money; that's another affair. I won't
help you to misery."

"You will be helping me _out_ of misery!" Eve exclaimed.

"Yes, for the present. I will make a bargain with you."

She looked at him with startled eyes.

"You shall have your thirty-five pounds on condition that you go to
live, for as long as I choose, in Paris. You are to leave London in a
day or two. Patty shall go with you; her uncle doesn't want her, and
she seems to have quarrelled with the man she was engaged to. The
expenses are my affair. I shall go to Paris myself, and be there while
you are, but you need see no more of me than you like. Those are the
terms."

"I can't think you are serious," said Eve.

"Then I'll explain why I wish you to do this. I've thought about you a
great deal; in fact, since we first met, my chief occupation has been
thinking about you. And I have come to the conclusion that you are
suffering from an illness, the result of years of hardship and misery.
We have agreed, you remember, that there are a good many points of
resemblance between your life and mine, and perhaps between your
character and mine. Now I myself, when I escaped from Dudley, was
thoroughly ill--body and soul. The only hope for me was a complete
change of circumstances--to throw off the weight of my past life, and
learn the meaning of repose, satisfaction, enjoyment. I prescribe the
same for you. I am your physician; I undertake your cure. If you refuse
to let me, there's an end of everything between us; I shall say
good-bye to you tonight, and to-morrow set off for some foreign
country."

"How can I leave my work at a moment's notice?"

"The devil take your work--for he alone is the originator of such
accursed toil!"

"How can I live at your ex