she
was left to bear the whole cost of her resistance. Hang it, if he could
find a way out of such difficulties for a professional sponge like Carry
Fisher, who was simply a mental habit corresponding to the physical
titillations of the cigarette or the cock-tail, he could surely do as
much for a girl who appealed to his highest sympathies, and who brought
her troubles to him with the trustfulness of a child.

Trenor and Miss Bart prolonged their drive till long after sunset; and
before it was over he had tried, with some show of success, to prove to
her that, if she would only trust him, he could make a handsome sum of
money for her without endangering the small amount she possessed. She was
too genuinely ignorant of the manipulations of the stock-market to
understand his technical explanations, or even perhaps to perceive that
certain points in them were slurred; the haziness enveloping the
transaction served as a veil for her embarrassment, and through the
general blur her hopes dilated like lamps in a fog. She understood only
that her modest investments were to be mysteriously multiplied without
risk to herself; and the assurance that this miracle would take place
within a short time, that there would be no tedious interval for suspense
and reaction, relieved her of her lingering scruples.

Again she felt the lightening of her load, and with it the release of
repressed activities. Her immediate worries conjured, it was easy to
resolve that she would never again find herself in such straits, and as
the need of economy and self-denial receded from her foreground she felt
herself ready to meet any other demand which life might make. Even the
immediate one of letting Trenor, as they drove homeward, lean a little
nearer and rest his hand reassuringly on hers, cost her only a momentary
shiver of reluctance. It was part of the game to make him feel that her
appeal had been an uncalculated impulse, provoked by the liking he
inspired; and the renewed sense of power in handling men, while it
consoled her wounded vanity, helped also to obscure the thought of the
claim at which his manner hinted. He was a coarse dull man who, under all
his show of authority, was a mere supernumerary in the costly show for
which his money paid: surely, to a clever girl, it would be easy to hold
him by his vanity, and so keep the obligation on his side.

Chapter 8

The first thousand dollar cheque which Lily received with a blotted
scraw