for her. In a few minutes
he pretended to recollect an engagement and succeeded in going off
alone. As he issued on to the pavement he found himself confronted by
the barmaid, who now wore a hat and cloak.

'Well?' he said, carelessly.

'Rodman's your name, is it?' was the reply.

'To my particular friends. Let's walk on; we can't chat here very well.'

'What is to prevent me from calling that policeman and giving you in
charge?' she asked, looking into his face with a strange mixture of
curiosity and anger.

'Nothing, except that you have no charge to make against me. The law
isn't so obliging as all that. Come, we'll take a walk.'

She moved along by his side.

'You coward!' she exclaimed, passionately but with none of the shrieking
virulence of women who like to make a scene in the street. 'You mean,
contemptible, cold-blooded man! I suppose you hoped I was starved to
death by this time, or in the workhouse, or--what did _you_ care where I
was! I knew I should find you some day.'

'I rather supposed you would stay on the other side of the water,'
Rodman remarked, glancing at her. 'You're changed a good deal. Now it's
a most extraordinary thing. Not so very long ago I was dreaming about
you, and you were serving at a bar--queer thing, wasn't it?'

They were walking towards Whitehall. When they came at length into an
ill-lighted and quiet spot, the woman stopped.

'Where do you live?' she asked.

'Live? Oh, just out here in Pimlico. Like to see my rooms?'

'What do you mean by talking to me like that? Do you make a joke of
deserting your wife and child for seven years, leaving them without a
penny, going about enjoying yourself, when, for anything you knew, they
were begging their bread? You always were heartless--it was the blackest
day of my life that I met you; and you ask me if I'd like to see your
rooms! What thanks to you that I'm not as vile a creature as there is in
London? How was I to support myself and the child? What was I to do when
they turned me into the streets of New York because I couldn't pay what
you owed them nor the rent of a room to sleep in? You took good care
_you_ never went hungry. I'd only one thing to hold me up: I was an
honest woman, and I made up my mind I'd keep honest, though I had such
a man as you for my husband. I've hungered and worked, and I've made a
living for myself and my child as best I could. I'm not like you: I've
done nothing to disgrace myself. Now I will s