e the chance
of eventually doing much better than I ever could at the old grind,
where, in fact, I had no prospect whatever."

"That's very good news," Eve remarked, gazing across the street.

"You think I ought to accept?"

"I suppose you can pay the fifty guineas, and still leave yourself
enough to live upon?"

"Enough till I earn something," Hilliard answered with a smile.

"Then I should think there's no doubt."

"The question is this--are you perfectly willing to go back to
Birmingham?"

"I'm _anxious_ to go."

"You feel quite restored to health?"

"I was never so well in my life."

Hilliard looked into her face, and could easily believe that she spoke
the truth. His memory would no longer recall the photograph in Mrs.
Brewer's album; the living Eve, with her progressive changes of
countenance, had obliterated that pale image of her bygone self. He saw
her now as a beautiful woman, mysterious to him still in many respects,
yet familiar as though they had been friends for years.

"Then, whatever life is before me," he said. "I shall have done _one_
thing that is worth doing."

"Perhaps--if everyone's life is worth saving," Eve answered in a voice
just audible.

"Everyone's is not; but yours was."

Two men who had been sitting not far from them rose and walked away. As
if more at her ease for this secession, Eve looked at her companion,
and said in a tone of intimacy:

"How I must have puzzled you when you first saw me in London!"

He answered softly:

"To be sure you did. And the thought of it puzzles me still."

"Oh, but can't you understand? No; of course you can't--I have told you
so little. Just give me an idea of what sort of person you expected to
find."

"Yes, I will. Judging from your portrait, and from what I was told of
you, I looked for a sad, solitary, hard-working girl--rather poorly
dressed--taking no pleasure--going much to chapel--shrinking from the
ordinary world."

"And you felt disappointed?"

"At first, yes; or, rather, bewildered--utterly unable to understand
you."

"You are disappointed still?" she asked.

"I wouldn't have you anything but what you are."

"Still, that other girl was the one you _wished_ to meet."

"Yes, before I had seen you. It was the sort of resemblance between her
life and my own. I thought of sympathy between us. And the face of the
portrait--but I see better things in the face that is looking at me
now."

"Don't be quite sure of that--