the
heart. She knew he was deceiving her, but to her he meant so much that
she had not the force of will to cast him off, and abandoned herself to
the intellectual sensualism of his society. It was this, and nothing
more. What her love might have been it is not necessary to analyze; in
the present circumstances, it was completely merged in the knowledge
that he was to her, light, freedom, and instruction, and that when he
left, darkness and ignorance would again close in upon her. They had not
spoken for some moments. With a cruelty that was peculiar to him, he
waited for her to break the silence.

'I am sorry you are going away; I am afraid we shall never meet again.'

'Oh yes, we shall,' he replied: 'you'll get married one of these days
and come to live in London.'

'Why should I go to live in London?'

'There are Frenchmen born in England, Englishmen born in France. Heine
was a Frenchman born in Germany--and you are a Kensingtonian. I see
nothing Irish in you. Oh, you are very Kensington, and therefore you
will--I do not know when or how, but assuredly as a stream goes to the
river and the river to the sea, you will drift to your native
place--Kensington. But do you know that I have left the hotel? There
were too many people about to do much work, so I took rooms in
Molesworth Street--there I can write and read undisturbed. You might
come and see me.'

'I should like to very much, but I don't think I could ask mother to
come with me; she is so very busy just now.'

'Well, don't ask your mother to come; you won't be afraid to come
alone?'

'I am afraid I could not do that.'

'Why not? No one will ever know anything about it.'

'Very possibly, but I don't think it would be a proper thing to do--I
don't think it would be a _right_ thing to do.'

'Right! I thought we had ceased to believe in heaven and hell.'

'Yes; but does that change anything? There are surely duties that we owe
to our people, to our families. The present ordering of things may be
unjust, but, as long as it exists, had we not better live in accordance
with it?'

'A very sensible answer, and I suppose you are right.'

Alice looked at him in astonishment, but she was shaken too intensely in
all her feelings to see that he was perfectly sincere, that his answer
was that of a man who saw and felt through his intelligence, and not his
conscience.

The conversation had come to a pause, and the silence was broken
suddenly by whispered word