r Liverpool."

Esther was spent with the weariness of the years that had brought her no
compensating joys for her meagre life with grandmother upstairs and her
most uneasy one since Madame Beattie came. How could she, even if
Reardon furnished money for it, be sure to free herself from Jeff in
time to taste some of the pleasures she craved while she was at her
prime of beauty? After all, there were other lands to wander in; it
wasn't necessary to sit down here and do what Addingtonians had done
since they settled the wretched place on the date they seemed to find so
sacred. So she told him, in a poor sad little whisper:

"I shall die if you leave me."

"I won't go," said Reardon, at once. "I'll stand by."

"You will go," said Esther fiercely, half in anger because he had to be
cajoled and prompted, "and take me with you."

Reardon, standing there feeling her beating heart against his hand,
thought that was how he had known it would be. He had always had a fear,
the three-o'clock-waking-in-the-morning fear, that sometime his
conventions would fall from him like a garment he had forgotten, and he
should do some act that showed him to Addington as he was born. He had
too, sometimes, a nightmare, pitifully casual, yet causing him an
anguish of shame: murdering his grammar or smoking an old black pipe
such as his father smoked and being caught with it, going to the club in
overalls. But now he realised what the malicious envy of fortune had in
store for him. He was to run off with his neighbour's wife. For an
instant he weakly meant to recall her to herself, to remind her that she
didn't want to do it. But it seemed shockingly indecorous to assume a
higher standard than her own, and all he could do was to assure her, as
he had been assuring her while he was swept along that dark underground
river of disconcerted thought: "I'll take care of you."

"What do you mean?" she returned, like a wild thing leaping at him. "Do
you mean really take care of me? over there?"

"Yes," said Reardon, without a last clutch at his lost vision, "over
there. We'll leave here Friday, for New York."

"I shall send my trunks in advance," said Esther. "By express. I shall
say I am going for dressmaking and the theatre."

Reardon settled down to bare details. It would be unwise to be seen
leaving on the same train, and he would precede her to New York. It
would be better also to stay at different hotels. Once landed they
would become--he sa