ight by
chance make a trifle of profit out of. It seems too late now to simply
take the child away, and there leave it. I haven't the shabby courage
to do such a thing; and besides, he might come to any sort of grief,
poor little chap, in that case. There's no doubt in the world that her
taking of him and doing for him have been the salvation of his health,
and perhaps his life. And I know, by what she tells me, that he
regularly dotes on her--as so he ought--and would howl his very head
off if I took him from her. What could I do with him if I did take him?
I've no home, and nobody to look after it if I had; and hired servants
are the deuce with a lone man at their mercy. It would be worse now
than it was at first. And so'--with another heavy sigh--'you see the
situation. I'm just swallowed up, body and bones, drowned fathoms deep
in a sea of debt and obligation that I can never by any possibility
struggle out of, except--"

"Except," continued Alice, with the candid air of a kind and sensible
sister--"except by marrying her, you mean? Yes, I see the situation. I
appreciate your point of view. I should understand it if it were not
that she unquestionably laid the trap for you deliberately--just as
that spider laid his for moths and flies. And marriage by capture has
gone out."

"Oh, don't say that!" the man protested, in haste. "I would not for a
moment accuse her of that. She was Lily's friend; it was for her--it
was out of pure womanly compassion for the motherless child; at any
rate, in the beginning. And even now I have no right whatever to
suppose--"

"But you know it, all the same. Every word you have said to me tells me
that you know it. You may as well be frank."

He squirmed a little in his chair, but confessed as required.

"Well--but it's a caddish thing to say--I think she does expect it. And
hasn't she the right to expect it? However, that's neither here nor
there. The point is that, in common honesty and manliness, I should
repay her if I can; and there's no other way--at least, I can't see any
other way. It is my fault, and not hers, that I don't take to the
notion; for a better woman never walked, nor one that would make a
better mother to the boy. But, somehow, you DO like to have your free
choice, don't you?" He had come as far as this--that he could entertain
the idea of choice, which meant a second choice.

"It would be utterly wrong, absolutely immoral, downright wicked, to
forego it," Alic