must front he
believed in her existence, but had never encountered her--as indeed
very few men have. From Eve he looked for nothing of the kind. If she
would permit herself to rest upon his sinews, that was all he desired.
The mood of their last night in Paris might perchance return, but only
with like conditions. Of his workaday passion she knew nothing; habit
of familiarity and sense of obligation must supply its place with her
until a brightening future once more set her emotions to the gladsome
tune.

Now that the days of sun and warmth were past, it was difficult to
arrange for a meeting under circumstances that allowed of free
comfortable colloquy. Eve declared that her father's house offered no
sort of convenience; it was only a poor cottage, and Hilliard would be
altogether out of place there. To his lodgings she could not come. Of
necessity they had recourse to public places in Birmingham, where an
hour or two of talk under shelter might make Eve's journey hither worth
while. As Hilliard lived at the north end of the town, he suggested
Aston Hall as a possible rendezvous, and here they met, early one
Saturday afternoon in December.

From the eminence which late years have encompassed with a proletarian
suburb, its once noble domain narrowed to the bare acres of a stinted
breathing ground, Aston Hall looks forth upon joyless streets and
fuming chimneys, a wide welter of squalid strife. Its walls, which bear
the dints of Roundhead cannonade, are blackened with ever-driving
smoke; its crumbling gateway, opening aforetime upon a stately avenue
of chestnuts, shakes as the steam-tram rushes by. Hilliard's
imagination was both attracted and repelled by this relic of what he
deemed a better age. He enjoyed the antique chambers, the winding
staircases, the lordly gallery, with its dark old portraits and vast
fireplaces, the dim-lighted nooks where one could hide alone and dream
away the present; but in the end, reality threw scorn upon such
pleasure. Aston Hall was a mere architectural relic, incongruous and
meaningless amid its surroundings; the pathos of its desecrated dignity
made him wish that it might be destroyed, and its place fittingly
occupied by some People's Palace, brand new, aglare with electric
light, ringing to the latest melodies of the street. When he had long
gazed at its gloomy front, the old champion of royalism seemed to
shrink together, humiliated by Time's insults.

It was raining when he met