Julian despondently.

"Then refuse to take her back! Sell your furniture; take one room for
yourself; and tell her she must live where she likes on a sufficient
allowance from you."

"I dare not. It is impossible. She would never leave me in peace."

"You will have to do this ultimately, if you are to continue to live.
Of that there is no doubt. So why not now?"

"I must think; it is impossible to make up my mind to such a thing at
once. I know you advise what is best; I have thought of it myself. But
I shall never have the courage! I am so miserably weak. If only I could
get my health back! Good God, how I suffer!"

Waymark did his best to familiarise Julian with the thought, and to
foster in him something of resoluteness, but he had small hope of
succeeding. The poor fellow was so incapable of anything which at all
resembled selfishness, and so dreaded the results of any such severity
on his part as that proposed. There were moments when indignation
almost nerved him to independence, but there returned so soon the souse
of pity, and, oftener still, the thought of that promise made to
Harriet's father, long ago, in the dark little parlour which smelt of
drugs. The poor chemist, whose own life was full of misery, had been
everything to him; but for Mr. Smales, he might now have been an
ignorant, coarse-handed working man, if not worse. Was Harriet past all
rescue? Was there not even yet a chance of saving her from herself and
those hateful friends of hers?

This was the natural reaction after listening to Waymark's remorseless
counsel. Going home, Julian fought once more the battle with himself,
till the usual troubled sleep severed his thoughts into fragments of
horrible dreams. The next day he felt differently; Waymark's advice
seemed more practical. In the afternoon he should have visited Harriet
in the ward, but an insuperable repulsion kept him away, and for the
first time. It was a bleak, cheerless day; the air was cold with the
breath of the nearing winter; At night he found it impossible to sit in
his own room, and dreaded to talk with any one. His thoughts were fixed
upon one place; a great longing drew him forth, into the darkness and
the rain of the streets, onwards in a fixed direction. It brought him
to Westminster, and to the gate of Tothill Fields Prison. The fetters
upon the great doors were hideous in the light of the lamps above them;
the mean houses around the gaol seemed to be rotting in its ac