ife. He
assured his young friend that the matter should have his very best
attention; and he melted into space as elusively as if, at the door, he
were taking an inevitable but deprecatory precedence. When, the next
moment, Pemberton found himself alone with Mrs. Moreen it was to hear her
say "I see, I see"--stroking the roundness of her chin and looking as if
she were only hesitating between a dozen easy remedies. If they didn't
make their push Mr. Moreen could at least disappear for several days.
During his absence his wife took up the subject again spontaneously, but
her contribution to it was merely that she had thought all the while they
were getting on so beautifully. Pemberton's reply to this revelation was
that unless they immediately put down something on account he would leave
them on the spot and for ever. He knew she would wonder how he would get
away, and for a moment expected her to enquire. She didn't, for which he
was almost grateful to her, so little was he in a position to tell.

"You won't, you _know_ you won't--you're too interested," she said. "You
are interested, you know you are, you dear kind man!" She laughed with
almost condemnatory archness, as if it were a reproach--though she
wouldn't insist; and flirted a soiled pocket-handkerchief at him.

Pemberton's mind was fully made up to take his step the following week.
This would give him time to get an answer to a letter he had despatched
to England. If he did in the event nothing of the sort--that is if he
stayed another year and then went away only for three months--it was not
merely because before the answer to his letter came (most unsatisfactory
when it did arrive) Mr. Moreen generously counted out to him, and again
with the sacrifice to "form" of a marked man of the world, three hundred
francs in elegant ringing gold. He was irritated to find that Mrs.
Moreen was right, that he couldn't at the pinch bear to leave the child.
This stood out clearer for the very reason that, the night of his
desperate appeal to his patrons, he had seen fully for the first time
where he was. Wasn't it another proof of the success with which those
patrons practised their arts that they had managed to avert for so long
the illuminating flash? It descended on our friend with a breadth of
effect which perhaps would have struck a spectator as comical, after he
had returned to his little servile room, which looked into a close court
where a bare dirty oppo