and seemed to understand.

They gazed steadfastly at one another--something greater than their
surroundings, greater even than themselves seemed to pass between them.
With swift intelligence, she felt him to be no more a boulevardier than
she was light. He murmured a few conventionalities and when he asked her
to have tea with him she accepted. Inside the warm little tea-room, he
told her of his work and of himself, and once secure in the knowledge of
the mere unit of humanity she represented to him, she told him of
herself. The human note was strong in all she said, and he declared in
all her talk the marks of a cultured intellect that must have rendered
beyond endurance the shoddy environment of a draper's establishment
where she passed her days. He offered her the means of escape from her
present slavery by becoming his subject for experiment and she did not
shrink. On her own testimony she stood alone in the world and upon her
sudden removal from her present life there would be no one with even the
right to search for her. He looked into her frail beautiful face
marveling at the depth of misery which produced this brave despair and
rising held out his hand.

"I must thank you very much for your society--and for your confidence,"
he said, "I have your address and I will write to you."

To-night he was in a curiously disturbed mood. All the evening Eleanor
Surtoes had figured in his thoughts. He had seen her several times since
that first meeting on the Edgware Road. She was one of the more tragic
figures in that world which he had spent so much strenuous effort
seeking to understand. The possibilities in connection with her loomed
large in his imagination. He was oppressed with fears which were
altogether new to him. Fortune could never have provided him with a
human creature modeled more exactly according to his requirements. He
knew her life and the ways of it. The confidence which he felt as to her
ultimate decision was not exaggerated. She would come to him for an
explanation of his words, and she would accept his proposition. Yet
never since his idea had first begun to loom large in his thoughts did
he look upon it with less enthusiasm than at this moment. A few hours
ago he had written to her--asked her to spend a day upon the river with
him. He knew that she would come. The crisis was close at hand. He hoped
to be able to delay it.

The door was quietly opened. His servant stood upon the threshold.

"Ther