A bitter east wind, which was taking sufficiently depressing effect upon all London, was dealing with peculiar grimness with Redburn Street, Camden Town. The neat little houses in that dreary grey dryness looked sordidly wretched; there was something deserted and hopeless about them. No one was to be seen, except that at a first-floor window about half-way down a woman’s figure was standing; and as Dennis Falconer turned into the street his footsteps rang with heavy distinctness on the glaring pavement. He strode slowly and steadily along, and his solitary figure, as it stood out with that peculiar sharpness of outline which is a characteristic production of east wind, harmonised absolutely with the sombreness of the background. His face was full of sombre purpose, grave and stern.

It was about three o’clock in the afternoon of Wednesday—two days after Julian’s return home. On the morning of the preceding day Julian and his mother had had a second interview, which had ended in his giving a sullen and reluctant assent to her demands; and in the evening Dennis Falconer had received from Mrs. Romayne a brief, almost peremptory note, begging him to come to her. He had gone to Queen Anne Street accordingly, severely unsympathetic, but also severely reliable, early on Wednesday morning.

He had found Mrs. Romayne in a feverish agony of agitation beyond even the power of her will to conceal or wholly to control. Her voice, painfully thin and sharp; her gestures restless, nervous, irritable; her utterance hard and rapid; had all testified to a strained, tense excitement before which all her artificiality was utterly submerged, and in which Falconer himself was obviously regarded by her solely as the one instrument at hand to her necessity. Her whole soul seemed to be set upon the immediate termination of “the affair,” as she called it. It affected her evidently in only one way, she looked at it from only one point of view: as something to be finished up, put away, buried out of sight. It was the thought of delay in the doing of this, only, that appeared to torture her; of the affair itself with all its terrible significance, its inevitable consequences, she had, as far as Falconer could divine, no adequate conception. The girl must be bought off; must be sent away; must be sent right out of the country, in case—and here came the one agonised sense of a possible consequence which Falconer could detect—in case Julian should marry her after all!

It was evidently the haunting terror of such a contingency which had driven her to send for Falconer. It was obvious, though she seemed to be striving hard to conceal it even from herself, that she could not trust her son; that she could find no rest in the promise she had wrung from him. What she had to say to Falconer was, in effect, that some one else must see the girl; the arrangement to be surely effected must be brought about by a third person who would set about the business promptly and act decidedly. It was this service which she wanted of Falconer, and Falconer, after a moment’s grave self-communing, agreed to render it. He was as far removed from sympathy with her in this her hard, agonised reality as he had been from the artificial woman of the previous months, or from the real woman of eighteen years before. He considered her point of view in the present instance absolutely revolting in her. But no man could question the practical sense of what she said, or the advisability of the course she proposed, and his conception of his obligations as her sole male relative and trustee was too intimately intertwined with his sense of duty and self-respect to allow him to entertain, even for a moment, the possibility of refusing to act for her. He had stood by her side, impelled by that sense of duty, gravely reliable, and unsympathetic, eighteen years before. The irony of fate decreed that it was for him, and for him only, to act for her now. To him it was simply the stern dictate of moral necessity to be obeyed as such.

Accordingly he had received her instructions, offering now and again a grim, practical suggestion, with a stern air of businesslike reserve; had undertaken—being at the bottom of her opinion as to the desirability of instant measures—to see “the girl” that same afternoon; and he was walking down Redburn Street now, in the pitiless east wind, to carry that undertaking into effect.

He reached the house, knocked, and asked briefly for Mrs. Roden. The landlady, whose sentiments towards her lodgers had developed rapidly in consequence of the enquiries which Falconer had felt it his duty to make, received his words with a sniff expressive of contempt; and then informed him, with a stare of insolent curiosity, that “she” was “hupstairs,” and led the way thither; evidently urged to that act of civility solely by a hope of finding out something. She was a coarse, vulgar-looking woman, with small red eyes, which glittered expectantly as she flung the door open and announced, in a loud and denunciatory voice, “’Ere’s a gentleman!”

But if she had hoped for startling revelations she was disappointed. Dennis Falconer advanced into the room with stern composure; the figure in the window turned quickly but quietly to meet him; and Mrs. Jackson was obliged to shut the door upon the two.

Clemence was looking very pale. The vague shadow which had fallen upon her as she journeyed up to London two days before had deepened into a wistful, questioning sadness. She had not seen Julian since she parted from him at Victoria Station. On the previous day she had received a note from him which told her that “work” kept him from her for that day, but that he would come as soon as he was able. There was nothing to distress or alarm her in the fact itself; more than once before a similar disappointment had come to her; and even though the second day brought her no letter, the blank merely meant, as she assured herself hour by hour, that she would see him before the day was done. But strive against it as she might, and did, she had spent the past twenty-four hours weighed down by a sense of trouble utterly undefined; utterly, as it seemed to her, without reason. She had borne her burden with mute patience, reproaching herself as for ingratitude and an inordinate desire for active happiness, and struggling bravely to conquer it; but neither arguing about it nor denying it, as a less simple and straightforward nature would have done. And now the appearance of Falconer seemed suddenly to focus and define her vague distress. The sudden conviction that Julian was ill, and that this gentleman had come from him to tell her so, held her still and silent in a pang of cruel realisation and anticipation.

The light, as she moved, had fallen full upon her face, and as he saw it a certain shock passed through Dennis Falconer. He had seen her figure, and even her face in the distance more than once, but he had never before seen it with any distinctness, and for the first instant the simplicity and purity of its beauty, with the expression deepened by the strange shadow through which the past two days had led her, clashed almost painfully with that idea of “the girl” which had grown, during his conversation with Mrs. Romayne, into a kind of fact for him. The next moment, however, he had reconciled appearances and realities, as he conceived them, with the grim reflection that there is no vice so vicious as that which wears an innocent face; and in doing so had quenched what might have been perception beneath a weight of narrow truism.

No greeting of any kind passed between them. All Clemence’s faculties were absorbed in her dread. Falconer was busied with the process of reconciliation. The strange little silence was broken eventually by Falconer, and he spoke with the unbending sternness and distance which that process and its conclusion had naturally accentuated.

“I am here as the representative of Julian Roden’s nearest relative and guardian,” he said. It had been arranged between himself and Mrs. Romayne, on the suggestion of the latter, that “the girl,” if she did not already know it, should be kept in ignorance of Julian’s real name.

The statement was slightly over-coloured, since Julian was of age, and his mother was no longer his guardian in any legal sense; but to stern moralists of Falconer’s type, to whom the pretty little falsenesses of life are wholly to be condemned, a slight misstatement in such a case is frequently permissible. The brief, uncompromising words had seemed to him to set the key of the interview beyond mistake. He was consequently slightly taken aback by their effect.

Every trace of colour died out of Clemence’s face, and two great dilated eyes gazed at him for an instant in dumb agony before she whispered:

“He’s not—dead?”

Falconer made a slight, almost contemptuous, negative gesture. He had no intention of being imposed upon by theatrical arts, and as Clemence, her self-control shattered by the sudden relief, turned instinctively away, and pressed her face down on the arm with which she had caught at the curtain for support, he went on with immoveable sternness:

“My business has to do with his life, not his death. The main point is very simple, and I will put it to you at once. Absolute ruin lies before him. Is he or is he not to embrace it?”

He saw her start, and she lifted her face quickly, and turned it to him all quivering and unstrung from her recent suffering, and quite white.

“He is in trouble!” she cried, low and breathlessly. “Oh, what is it? What has happened?”

Dennis Falconer’s patience was approaching its limits, and he spoke curtly and conclusively.

“I think we may dispense with this kind of thing,” he said. “It can serve no purpose, as everything is known. I come now from his mother with full power to act for her——”

He was interrupted. A burning colour, the colour of such paralysing surprise as can take in hardly the bare statement, much less the consequent developements and inferences, had rushed suddenly over Clemence’s face, dyeing her very throat.

“His mother!” she exclaimed. “His mother!” Her tone dropped as she repeated the words into a strange, uncertain murmur, in which incredulity, acceptance—as a kind of experiment—and something that was almost fear, were inextricably blended.

The fear alone caught Falconer’s ear. His lips were parted to resume his speech with grim decisiveness in the conviction that she understood at last that nothing was to be gained by trifling with him, when she said, as though he had had nothing to do with her previous words:

“Go on, please.”

He looked at her again, and was struck by a new look in her face, as he had been struck by a new tone in her voice. She was evidently going to drop all theatricalities, he told himself.

“Perhaps you were not aware that he is, practically, under the control of his mother,” he said. “That is to say, he is dependent on her for every penny he spends. It is quite out of the question that he should make money at the bar—by his own profession, that is to say—for two or three years at least. Consequently the cutting off of the allowance made him by Mrs. —— Roden will mean for him absolute penury.”

She was staring at him; staring at him out of two wide, intense brown eyes; with such a helpless bewilderment in her face that she seemed to be quite dazed. She put her hand to her head as he paused with a feeble, uncertain gesture; but she did not speak, and Falconer went on severely:

“I conclude that he has not represented these facts to you as they stand. They are facts, nevertheless. You will, therefore, understand that, his allowance withdrawn, he will be entirely without the means of supporting you. You may possibly consider that some shifty means might be found which, by putting him in possession of small sums of money, would enable him for a time to defy his mother. Let me point out to you something of what such a course would involve. Julian Roden is a young man with a good position in society—I mean he is accustomed to be made much of by men and women who are his equals; he has chances and opportunities of which he intends, no doubt, to avail himself. All this, in taking such a step, he would throw away for ever. Social intercourse, future career, would go with his income at his mother’s word. Now, I will ask you only how long you could hope to depend on him in such circumstances; how long it would be before his only feeling for the woman whom he had allowed to drag him down and to destroy all his hopes in life would degenerate into sheer repugnance; and for how long he would care to keep her?”

He paused, and after a moment’s dead silence Clemence spoke in a weak, eager, almost desperate voice:

“There must be some mistake! It—it can’t be—the same!”

The words seemed to Falconer a mere miserable subterfuge, and he answered very sternly:

“There is not the faintest possibility of mistake. Julian Roden has owned the whole affair to his mother, who taxed him with it on her discovery——”

“Oh, wait a minute! Wait a minute!”

There was a ring of such intolerable pain, such shame and anguish, in the voice, that Falconer’s attention, heavy and prejudiced as it was, was arrested by it. Dimly and uncertainly, and for the first time, the girl before him appeared to him, not simply as a representative of a degraded sisterhood, but as a woman. He looked at her for a moment, as she stood with her face buried in her hands, quivering from head to foot, with a severe kind of pity.

“I will tell you, as briefly as may be, what I am charged to say,” he said gravely, but not ungently. “Mrs. —— Roden is determined to break off her son’s disgraceful connection with you at the cost of any suffering to herself or to him. She is willing to believe that her son is to be considered in some sort as the more guilty party of the two in having acted as the tempter, and she has no wish to deal otherwise than generously by you. But there are conditions.”

He paused again. Over the slender, bowed woman’s figure before him there had gradually crept, as he spoke, a stillness like the stillness of death; and now, as he waited for her to speak, Clemence slowly lifted her head and looked at him; looked at him with dull, sunken eyes, which seemed the only living points in a face out of which all life and expression seemed to have been crushed by a rigid, haggard mask.

“Conditions?” she repeated.

Her voice was hollow, and had a monotonous, far-away sound, and the word seemed to have no meaning for her.

A sense of vague discomfort took possession of Dennis Falconer. A dim sense that he was not being met as he had expected—as he had a right to expect—disturbed and annoyed him. He had no idea that what he was chiefly discomposed by was a hazy consciousness that a touch of unconscionable respect for the woman who, as he believed, was utterly unworthy of respect, was mingling with his already sufficiently unorthodox sense of pity; but he entrenched himself in a triple armour of stiffness.

“The conditions are these,” he said. “You will give your written word, as under penalties for having obtained money by false pretences, to leave England on a given date and by a given route, and not to return to England within the next ten years. Mrs. —— Roden in return will pay you the sum of five hundred pounds. If you refuse these terms, and Roden submits to his mother, you will simply be the poorer by five hundred pounds. If you induce him to defy his mother, the consequences I have already described to you will inevitably ensue.”

He waited for her answer, steadily fortifying himself against being surprised at anything she might say; but no answer came. That strange, stricken face was still turned full towards him, but he had an uneasy sense that he was not seen by the great, dull, dark eyes. He felt, too, that as she stood there with her hands tightly clasped together, she was not thinking even remotely of the choice he had set before her, though he knew that she had heard his words and understood them. It was with an instinctive desire to rouse her, to bring back some expression to her face, that he said, with an awkward gentleness which was quite involuntary:

“There is no need for you to decide hastily. You understand the alternative thoroughly, no doubt. I will leave you my address, and you can write me your answer.”

He felt in his pocket for his card-case, and the movement seemed to rouse her. She stopped him with a slight motion of her hand.

“There’s no need,” she said. As though the act of speaking had brought her back from somewhere far away, and as though the claims of the moment were gradually becoming present to her, she paused as if to gather force, and to close upon herself a certain strangely fine reserve, which seemed at once to hedge her about and hold her aloof from the man to whom she spoke; and then she spoke very quietly. “I don’t want any money. If it is better that he should be free of me, he shall be free. That’s all.”

“You are making a mistake!” returned Falconer quickly. There was something about the dignity of her manner which made him feel curiously impotent and small, as though in the presence of an unknown power greater than himself, and the sense increased the touch of irritation he had already experienced. His tone was no longer coldly stern; it was insistent and annoyed. “You should consider your future. If you accept Mrs. Roden’s offer and leave England with a small capital you will have a chance of beginning life again. The step you have lately taken may be your first step on the downward path—I conclude that it is. You should reflect how difficult it is to pause there. With a little money you may establish yourself in a respectable business, and in the course of time you may even redeem your unfortunate past.”

Not a muscle of the still, pale face moved. It seemed to have grown strangely older and stronger in the course of the short interview, and it listened to him with an air of courteous patience which seemed to set an impassable distance between them. The perfect steadiness of her voice as she replied was the steadiness not of composure but of reserve.

“It is quite impossible!” she said.

“Then I am sorry to have to say that I consider you both foolish and ungrateful!” said Falconer with increasing severity. “You put it entirely out of our power to do anything for you. Am I to understand that you refuse to leave England?”

“I don’t know. I must think!” Still the same distant, unmoved patience.

“You will do well to think,” was Falconer’s reply, “and to put away from you in doing so a false pride, which is entirely misplaced. I will give you twenty-four hours for consideration, and to-morrow afternoon I will call and see you again.” On second thoughts it had occurred to Falconer that it would be a false step to give her his name and address. “I shall hope to find that you have come to a sensible decision.”

He paused a moment, and she made a slight gesture of acquiescence, rather as though his words were indifferent to her than in any token of assent to what he said. He added a stiff, formal “Good afternoon!” and as her lips moved mechanically as if to frame the words in answer, he turned and left the room.

As though his presence and his words had been so mere a drop in the deep waters of suffering which held her that his withdrawal affected her not at all, Clemence stood for the moment just as he left her, hardly conscious, as it seemed, that he was gone. Then, as though the sense that she was alone had come to her gradually, she dropped feebly into a chair, and let her face fall heavily forward upon the table.