l instinct they
seemed to avoid discussing his personal concerns now, Helen receiving
him just as an old friend and as if there had been nothing in their
lives to make a special link between them. She seemed to have grown
somewhat graver in expression, and he was not sure that he did not
like her face better like that. She amused and cheered him, and, once
they had come together again, she insisted there was no reason now why
he should not come oftener. And so, on a rare Saturday afternoon, when
he was free, he would come in for an hour and listen to her pleasant
chatting. Only when he brought her money would she permit herself any
reference to his progress in life.

Of Cleo he heard nothing. She had not made another appearance on the
boards, or, if she had, it had been in some obscure way. She intruded
into his thoughts often enough, and was still a reality to him when he
specially dwelt on her. But he was quite startled one day at suddenly
realising the rapidity with which she was becoming a far-off shadow.
There were moments now when he could almost believe that the whole
episode of his marriage had been the veriest product of his fancy.

Frequently in the evenings and on rest days he would employ his
leisure wandering amid the regions in which his lot was now cast. For
the first time now he felt the mammoth city as a reality; for the
first time he seemed to comprehend it--what it was and what it
represented. In the days when he had trodden these same pavements
with Helen its aspect had been merely panoramic. Now he himself was of
it, a living and breathing unit of the multitude of toilers that
peopled these vast industrial quarters. His vision pierced the
swarming surface, the great grimy thoroughfares with their tramlines,
their miles of sordid shops, their windowed expanse of brick, dingy
and far-stretching, their serried lines of narrow houses.

And then he would feel that a great sense of the spirit of human life
was passing into his blood. Leaping flashes of light came to him at
times, as he sat in his garret with the fused murmur of the world
surging in his ears, illumining for him abysses that had appeared to
him once dark and bottomless.

CHAPTER VI.

It was early in March before Archibald Druce was well enough to come
to town. Morgan's working day ended at seven o'clock, and at that hour
Archibald called at the printing establishment, and the two went off
together.

Morgan was excited, and h