t him steadily now. "Yes," she assented, "people would
talk."

"And they pity me. I do hate to be pitied, in that way. Even the
people up here, at the old lodgings . . . I won't come to them again.
If I thought the children . . . One never can tell how much children
know--"

"Don't, Willy!"

He plunged a hand into his pocket. "I daresay, now, you're starving?"

Her arms began to sway again, and she laughed quietly, hideously.
"Don't--don't--don't! I make money. That's the worst. I make money.
Oh, why don't you hit me? Why was you always a soft man?"

For a moment he stood horribly revolted. But his weakness had a better
side, and he showed it now.

"I say, Annie . . . is it so bad?"

"It is hell."

"'Soft'?" he harked back again. "It might take some courage to be
soft."

She peered at him eagerly; then sighed. "But you haven't that sort of
courage, Willy."

"They would say . . ." he went on musing, "I wonder what they would say?
. . . Come back to the lamp," he cried with sudden peevishness.
"Don't look out there . . . this circle of light on the pavement . . .
like a map of the world."

"With only our two shadows on it."

"If it were all the world . . ." He peered around, searching the
darkness. "If there were nothing to concern us beyond, and we could
stay always inside it . . ."

"--With the light shining straight down on us, and our shadows close at
our feet, and so small! But directly we moved beyond they would
lengthen, lengthen . . ."

"'Forsaking all other'--that's what the Service says. And what does
that mean if we cannot stand apart from all and render account to each
other only? I tell you I've made allowances. I didn't make any in the
old days, being wrapped up in the shop and the chapel, and you not
caring for either. There was fault on my side: I've come to see that."

"I'd liefer you struck me, Willy, instead of making allowances."

"Oh, come, that's nonsense. It seems to me, Annie, there's nothing we
couldn't help to mend together. It would never be the same, of course:
but we can understand . . . or at least overlook." In his magnanimity
he caught at high thoughts. "This light above us--what if it were the
Truth?"

"Truth doesn't overlook," she answered, with a hopeless scorn which
puzzled him. "No, no," she went on rapidly, yet more gently, "Truth
knows of the world outside, and is wakeful. If we move a step our
shadows will lengthen. They will touch a