, they walked
into another room. Hilliard began to speak again of his scheme for
providing a place where they could meet and talk at their ease. Eve now
entered into it with frank satisfaction.

"Have you said anything yet to Mr. Narramore?" she asked at length.

"No. I have never felt inclined to tell him. Of course I shall some
day. But it isn't natural to me to talk of this kind of thing, even
with so intimate a friend. Some men couldn't keep it to themselves: for
me the difficulty is to speak."

"I asked again, because I have been thinking--mightn't Mr. Narramore be
able to help me to get work?"

Hilliard repelled the suggestion with strong distaste. On no account
would he seek his friend's help in such a matter. And Eve said no more
of it.

On her return journey to Dudley, between eight and nine o'clock, she
looked cold and spiritless. Her eyelids dropped wearily as she sat in
the corner of the carriage with some papers on her lap, which Hilliard
had given her. Rain had ceased, and the weather seemed turning to
frost. From Dudley station she had a walk of nearly half an hour, to
the top of Kate's Hill.

Kate's Hill is covered with an irregular assemblage of old red-tiled
cottages, grimy without, but sometimes, as could be seen through an
open door admitting into the chief room, clean and homely-looking
within. The steep, narrow alleys leading upward were scarce lighted;
here and there glimmered a pale corner-lamp, but on a black night such
as this the oil-lit windows of a little shop, and the occasional gleam
from doors, proved very serviceable as a help in picking one's path.
Towards the top of the hill there was no paving, and mud lay thick.
Indescribable the confusion of this toilers' settlement--houses and
workshops tumbled together as if by chance, the ways climbing and
winding into all manner of pitch-dark recesses, where eats prowled
stealthily. In one spot silence and not a hint of life; in another,
children noisily at play amid piles of old metal or miscellaneous
rubbish. From the labyrinth which was so familiar to her, Eve issued of
a sudden on to a sort of terrace, where the air blew shrewdly: beneath
lay cottage roofs, and in front a limitless gloom, which by daylight
would have been an extensive northward view, comprising the towns of
Bilston and Wolverhampton. It was now a black gulf, without form and
void, sputtering fire. Flames that leapt out of nothing, and as
suddenly disappeared; tongues