s soul or his righteousness,
but that he might not be wasted. And while he slept, for hours and hours
she thought and prayed for him.

He drifted away from Miriam imperceptibly, without knowing he was going.
Arthur only left the army to be married. The baby was born six months
after his wedding. Mrs. Morel got him a job under the firm again, at
twenty-one shillings a week. She furnished for him, with the help of
Beatrice's mother, a little cottage of two rooms. He was caught now. It
did not matter how he kicked and struggled, he was fast. For a time he
chafed, was irritable with his young wife, who loved him; he went almost
distracted when the baby, which was delicate, cried or gave trouble. He
grumbled for hours to his mother. She only said: "Well, my lad, you did
it yourself, now you must make the best of it." And then the grit
came out in him. He buckled to work, undertook his responsibilities,
acknowledged that he belonged to his wife and child, and did make a good
best of it. He had never been very closely inbound into the family. Now
he was gone altogether.

The months went slowly along. Paul had more or less got into connection
with the Socialist, Suffragette, Unitarian people in Nottingham, owing
to his acquaintance with Clara. One day a friend of his and of Clara's,
in Bestwood, asked him to take a message to Mrs. Dawes. He went in the
evening across Sneinton Market to Bluebell Hill. He found the house in
a mean little street paved with granite cobbles and having causeways of
dark blue, grooved bricks. The front door went up a step from off this
rough pavement, where the feet of the passersby rasped and clattered.
The brown paint on the door was so old that the naked wood showed
between the rents. He stood on the street below and knocked. There came
a heavy footstep; a large, stout woman of about sixty towered above him.
He looked up at her from the pavement. She had a rather severe face.

She admitted him into the parlour, which opened on to the street. It was
a small, stuffy, defunct room, of mahogany, and deathly enlargements of
photographs of departed people done in carbon. Mrs. Radford left him.
She was stately, almost martial. In a moment Clara appeared. She flushed
deeply, and he was covered with confusion. It seemed as if she did not
like being discovered in her home circumstances.

"I thought it couldn't be your voice," she said.

But she might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. She invited