"

"Well, it sounds brutal, but it's very good sense. All progress
involves disagreeable necessities."

Mrs. Wade was looking about the room, smiling, absent. She rose
abruptly.

"I mustn't spoil your one quiet evening. How do the proofs go on?"

"Would you care to take a batch of them?" asked Quarrier. "These are
revises--you might be able to make a useful suggestion."

She hesitated, but at length held out her hand.

"You have rather a long walk," said Lilian. "I hope it's fine."

"No; it drizzles."

"Oh, how kind of you to take so much trouble on our account!"

Mrs. Wade went out into the darkness. It was as disagreeable a night as
the time of year could produce; black overhead, slimy under foot, with
a cold wind to dash the colder rain in one's face. The walk home took
more than half an hour, and she entered her cottage much fatigued.
Without speaking to the girl who admitted her, she went upstairs to
take off her out-of-door things; on coming down to the sitting-room,
she found her lamp lit, her fire burning, and supper on the table--a
glass of milk and some slices of bread and butter. Her friends would
have felt astonishment and compassion had they learned how plain and
slight was the fare that supported her; only by reducing her household
expenditure to the strict minimum could she afford to dress in the
manner of a lady, supply herself with a few papers and books, and keep
up the appearances without which it is difficult to enjoy any society
at all.

To-night she ate and drank with a bitter sense of her poverty and
loneliness. Before her mind's eye was the picture of Denzil Quarrier's
study--its luxury, brightness, wealth of volumes; and Denzil's face
made an inseparable part of the scene. That face had never ceased to
occupy her imagination since the evening of his lecture at the
Institute. Its haunting power was always greatest when she sat here
alone in the stillness. This little room, in which she had known the
pleasures of independence and retirement, seemed now but a prison. It
was a mean dwelling, fit only for labouring folk; the red blind
irritated her sight, and she had to turn away from it.

What a hope had come to her of a sudden last autumn! How recklessly she
had indulged it, and how the disappointment rankled!

A disappointment which she could not accept with the resignation due to
fate. At first she had done so; but then a singular surmise crept into
her thoughts--a suspicion which