caught amid a swirl of
storm-blown icicles.

"The remedy is simple," he said, at last.

"It is. I have forty thousand a year. Marry me for my money."

"Declined, with thanks."

"So blunt, yet so pointed. A pity it's not original. But I know what
you meant by your remedy. You don't see it would be a double crime,
and you are too good a man even to commit a single one."

"You mean----"

"I mean I should follow you. It would be just lovely to be rowed
across the Styx together. Of course, I should have to pay your
obolus."

"It is getting late. I really think we ought to turn back."

Lady Thiselton sighed.

"I must confess I am dejected," she said. "I should like to have a
quiet cry. What are you going to do, Morgan?"

"Nothing."

But he knew that would mean bankruptcy, and he had also an unpleasant
conviction that she meant what she said about following him.

"And even if we did go to throw sugar to Cerberus, your father would
step in and inherit your debts, and you will have sacrificed us both
in vain. The result is the same, whether we go to Whitechapel or to
the other place. You can't make it otherwise. Now, if you won't let me
be your wife, at least let me be a sort of mother to you."

Her thought met his just at the right junction. He did not answer
because her argument was unanswerable. How else avoid coming on the
paternal purse again?

"I am only asking you, Morgan, to let me help you live just as you
want to live."

She spoke with pleading and humility.

"We shall be towards each other just as we are now," she continued,
"and although I intended to torment you till you agreed I was worth an
occasional kiss on the forehead in return for mine--which would not at
all take us out of the platonic, or rather plutonic, regions in which
you so sternly insist we must abide--I shall give you my word to cease
from active hostilities for six whole months. Just think--I undertake
to be content for the next six months with kissing you on the forehead
once each time. Is that not sufficiently an earnest of my good faith?"

Again he gave her no answer, and, in the silence that followed, their
footsteps seemed to be echoed back to them. Since to die were futile,
let it be she rather than another that helped him to live. She was a
good friend and a loyal one. Of course, it was repugnant to take money
from a woman, but to take it from anybody else would be still more
repugnant.

"As is usually the case in lif