science. He had
promised Keith not to see her. Keith had been decent and loyal to
him--good old Keith! But he would never understand that this girl was
now all he cared about in life; that he would rather be cut off from
life itself than be cut off from her. Instead of becoming less and less,
she was becoming more and more to him--experience strange and thrilling!
Out of deep misery she had grown happy--through him; out of a sordid,
shifting life recovered coherence and bloom, through devotion to him
him, of all people in the world! It was a miracle. She demanded nothing
of him, adored him, as no other woman ever had--it was this which had
anchored his drifting barque; this--and her truthful mild intelligence,
and that burning warmth of a woman, who, long treated by men as but a
sack of sex, now loves at last.

And suddenly, mastering his craving to get drunk, he made towards Soho.
He had been a fool to give those keys to Keith. She must have been
frightened by his visit; and, perhaps, doubly miserable since, knowing
nothing, imagining everything! Keith was sure to have terrified her.
Poor little thing!

Down the street where he had stolen in the dark with the dead body on
his back, he almost ran for the cover of her house. The door was opened
to him before he knocked, her arms were round his neck, her lips pressed
to his. The fire was out, as if she had been unable to remember to keep
warm. A stool had been drawn to the window, and there she had evidently
been sitting, like a bird in a cage, looking out into the grey street.
Though she had been told that he was not to come, instinct had kept her
there; or the pathetic, aching hope against hope which lovers never part
with.

Now that he was there, her first thoughts were for his comfort. The fire
was lighted. He must eat, drink, smoke. There was never in her doings
any of the "I am doing this for you, but you ought to be doing that for
me" which belongs to so many marriages, and liaisons. She was like a
devoted slave, so in love with the chains that she never knew she wore
them. And to Laurence, who had so little sense of property, this
only served to deepen tenderness, and the hold she had on him. He
had resolved not to tell her of the new danger he ran from his own
conscience. But resolutions with him were but the opposites of what was
sure to come; and at last the words:

"They've arrested someone," escaped him.

From her face he knew she had grasped the danger