and be supported by me. I tell you that it was
never _possible_ for me actually to desert you and the little one--never
possible. I shirked a duty as long as I could; that's all it comes to.
I loafed and paltered until the want of a dinner drove me into honesty.
Try to forget it, dear Nancy. Try to forgive me, my dearest!'

She was dry-eyed again, and his appeal seemed to have no power over her
emotions.

'You are forgetting,' she said practically, 'that I have lived on money
to which I had no right, and that I--or you--can be forced to repay it.'

'Repaid it must be, whether demanded or not. Where does Barmby live?
Perhaps I could see him to-night.'

'What means have you of keeping us all alive?'

'Some of my work has been accepted here and there; but there's something
else I have in mind. I don't ask you to become a poverty-stricken wife
in the ordinary way. I can't afford to take a house. I must put you,
with the child, into as good lodgings as I can hope to pay for, and work
on by myself, just seeing you as often as you will let me. Even if you
were willing, it would be a mistake for us to live together. For one
thing, I couldn't work under such conditions; for another, it would
make you a slave. Tell me: are you willing to undertake the care of the
child, if nothing else is asked of you?'

Nancy gave him a disdainful smile, a smile like those of her girlhood.

'I'm not quite so feeble a creature as you think me.'

'You would rather have the child to yourself, than be living away from
him?'

'If you have made up your mind, why trouble to ask such questions?'

'Because I have no wish to force burdens upon you. You said just now
that you could see little prospect of freedom in such a life as I have
to offer you. I thought you perhaps meant that the care of the child
would--'

'I meant nothing,' Nancy broke in, with fretful impatience.

'Where is he--our boy?'

'At Dulwich. I told you that in my last letter.'

'Yes--yes. I thought you might have changed.'

'I couldn't have found a better, kinder woman. Can you guess how many
answers I had to the advertisement? Thirty-two.'

'Of course five-and-twenty of them took it for granted you would pay so
much a week and ask no questions. They would just not have starved the
baby,--unless you had hinted to them that you were willing to pay a lump
sum for a death-certificate, in which case the affair would have been
more or less skilfully managed.'

'Mary knew