se? it
proved how strong her desire had grown to be free from him.

The innocent Patty (_was_ she so innocent?) seemed not to suspect the
meaning of her friend's talk. Yet Eve must have all but told her in so
many words that she was weary of her lover. That hateful harping on
"gratitude"! Well, one cannot purchase a woman's love. He had missed
the right, the generous, line of conduct. That would have been to
rescue Eve from manifest peril, and then to ask nothing of her. Could
he but have held his passions in leash, something like
friendship--rarest of all relations between man and woman--might have
come about between him and Eve. She, too, certainly had never got
beyond the stage of liking him as a companion; her senses had never
answered to his appeal He looked back upon the evening when they had
dined together at the restaurant in Holborn. Could he but have stopped
at _that_ point! There would have been no harm in such avowals as then
escaped him, for he recognised without bitterness that the warmth of
feeling was all on one side, and Eve, in the manner of her sex, could
like him better for his love without a dream of returning it. His error
was to have taken advantage--perhaps a mean advantage--of the strange
events that followed. If he restrained himself before, how much more he
should have done so when the girl had put herself at his mercy, when to
demand her love was the obvious, commonplace, vulgar outcome of the
situation? Of course she harped on "gratitude." What but a sense of
obligation had constrained her?

Something had taken place to-day; he felt it as a miserable certainty.
The man from London had been with her. She expected him, and had
elaborately planned for a day of freedom. Perhaps her invitation of
Patty had no other motive.

That Patty was a conspirator against him he could not believe. No! She
was merely an instrument of Eve's subtlety. And his suspicion had not
gone beyond the truth. Eve entertained the hope that Patty might take
her place. Perchance the silly, good-natured girl would feel no
objection; though it was not very likely that she foresaw or schemed
for such an issue.

At Snow Hill station it cost him an effort to rise and leave the
carriage. His mood was sluggish; he wished to sit still and think idly
over the course of events.

He went byway of St. Philip's Church, which stands amid a wide
graveyard, enclosed with iron railings, and crossed by paved walks. The
locality was al