almost at once.'

'My poor little girl.' Victoria softly stroked the rough back of her
hand.

'Oh, I wasn't sorry . . . it was a little girl . . . they don't want any
more in the world. Besides I didn't care for anything; I'd lost him
. . . and my job. I couldn't go back. My landlady wrote me a character
to go to Cornwall Road.'

'And there I found you.'

'I wonder what we are going to do for you,' she went on. 'Where is
Edward now?'

'Oh, I couldn't go back; I'm ashamed. . . .'

'Nonsense, you haven't done anything wrong. He shall marry you.'

'He would have,' said Betty a little coldly, 'he's square.'

'Yes, I know. He didn't beg you very hard, did he? However, never mind.
I'm not going to let you go until I've made you happy. Now I'll tuck you
up with a rug, and you're going to sleep before the fire.'

Betty lay limp and unresisting in the ministering hands. The unwonted
sensations of comfort, warmth and peace soothed her to sleepiness.
Besides, she felt as if she had wept every tear in her racked body. Soon
her features relaxed, and she sank into profound, almost deathlike
slumber.

Victoria meanwhile told her story to Jack, who sat in the dining room
reading a novel and smoking cigarettes. He came out of his coma as
Victoria unfolded the tale of Betty's upbringing, her struggle to live,
then love the meteor flashing through her horizon. His cheeks flushed
and his mouth quivered as Victoria painted for him the picture of the
girl half distraught, bearing the burden of her shame, unable to reason
or to forsee, to think of anything except the saving of a gentleman from
life on thirty bob a week.

'Something ought to be done,' he said at length, closing his book with
novel vivacity.

'Yes, but what?'

'I don't know.' His eyes questioned the wall; they grew vaguer and
vaguer as his excitement decreased, as a ship in docks sinks further and
further on her side while the water ebbs away.

'You think of something,' he said at length, picking up his book again.
'I don't care what it costs.'

Victoria left him and went for a walk through the misty streets seeking
a solution. There were not many. She could not keep Betty with her, for
she was pure though betrayed; contact with the irregular would degrade
her because habit would induce her to condone that which she morally
condemned. It would spoil her and would ultimately throw her into a life
for which she was not fitted because gentle and unspoiled.