It was late in the afternoon. The old man had gone away to Exeter, to bury his sister, his only surviving relative. Joyce was alone in the shop busily sorting a job lot of books that had come in during the morning. They were stacked in great piles at the further end, forming a barrier between himself and the doorway, where the falling light was creeping in upon the neatly-arranged shelves. Above him flared a gas-jet. It was warm and dusty work, and Joyce had taken off his coat and collar and rolled up the sleeves of his flannel shirt. Some of the worthless books he threw on two piles on the floor, to be placed in the twopenny and fourpenny boxes outside. Others he priced and catalogued. Others, again, in good bindings, or otherwise obviously of value, he dusted with a feather brush and put aside for the old man’s inspection. Now and again space failed for the assorted lots, and he would carry great strings of volumes supported under his chin to convenient stacking-spaces on the shelves. Then he would proceed with his sorting, cataloguing, and cleansing.

Presently the back-parlour door opened and Yvonne appeared. Joyce paused, with a grimy volume in his hand, in the midst of a cloud of dust that rose like incense, and his heart gave a little throb of gladness. She looked so fresh and sweet as she stood there, daintily aproned, in the darkness of the doorway, with the light from the gas-jet falling upon her face.

“Tea’s ready,” she remarked.

“Let me finish this lot,” he said, pointing to a pile, “and then I ’ll come.”

She nodded, advanced a step and took up a great in-folio black-letter.

“What silly rubbish,” she said, with a superior little grimace, as she turned over the pages. “Fancy any one wanting to buy this.”

“You had better put it down, if you don’t want to cover yourself with dirt,” said Joyce.

She dropped the book, looked at her soiled hands with a comic air of disgust.

“Horrid things! Why did n’t you tell me?”

Joyce laughed for answer. It was so like Yvonne. After she had withdrawn, with a further reminder about the tea, he went on smiling to himself.

It was very sweet, this brother and sister life of theirs, in spite of its isolation. There seemed no reason why it should not continue for ever. Indeed, he scarcely thought of change. Now that his small earnings seemed practically assured and Yvonne could contribute from her singing lessons something to the household expenses, the wolf was kept pretty far from the door.

He was in one of his lighter moods, when Yvonne’s sunshine “scattered the ghosts of the past,” and illuminated the dark places in his heart. He hummed a song, forgetful of the gaol and his pariahdom, and thought of Yvonne’s face awaiting him at the tea-table, as soon as he had completed his task.

A hesitating step was heard in the shop. He thought it was the boy returning from an errand.

“Another time you are sent out round the corner, don’t take a quarter of an hour,” he cried, without turning round.

An irritated tap of the foot made him realise that it was a customer. He sprang forward with apologies, and, as it had grown dusk, he seized a taper and quickly lighted the gas in the shop.

Then he looked at the man and started back in amazement; and the man looked at him; and for a few seconds they remained staring at one another. The visitor wore apron and gaiters and a bishop’s hat, and his dignified presence was that of Everard Chisely. He surveyed Joyce’s grimy and workaday figure with a curl of disgust on his lip. The glance stung Joyce like a taunt. He flushed, drew himself up defiantly.

“You are the last person I expected to meet here,” said the Bishop, haughtily.

“Your lordship is the last person I desired to see,” retorted Joyce.

“Doubtless,” replied the Bishop. “And now we have met, I have only one thing to say to you. I have traced Madame Latour to this house. Where is she?”

“She is here—upstairs.”

“In this—” began the Bishop, looking round and seeking for a word expressive of distaste.

“—hovel?” suggested Joyce. “Yes.”

“Under your protection?”

“Under my protection.”

Then Joyce noticed that his lips twitched, and that the perspiration beaded on his forehead, and that an agony of questioning was in his eyes.

“Have you been villain enough—?” he began in a hoarse, trembling voice.

But Joyce checked him with a sudden flash and an angry gesture.

“Stop! She is as pure as the stars. Let there be no doubt about that. I tell you for her sake, not for yours.”

The Bishop drew a long breath and wiped his forehead. Joyce took his silence for incredulity.

“If I were a villain,” he continued, “do you think it would matter a brass button to me whether you knew it? I should say ‘yes,’ and you would walk away and I should never see you again.”

He thrust his hands in his pockets and faced his cousin. All the pariah’s bitter hatred arose within him against the man who stood there, the representative of the caste that had disowned and reviled him; conscious, too, as he was, of standing for the moment on a higher plane.

“I believe you. Oh—indeed—I believe you,” replied Everard, hurriedly. “But why is she here? Why has she sunk as low as this?”

“Your lordship should be the last to ask such a question.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“I should have thought it was obvious,” said Joyce, with a shrug of his shoulders.

The sarcasm sounded in the Bishop’s ears like cynicism.

“Do you mean that you have inveigled Madame Latour into supporting you?” he asked in a tone of disgust.

Joyce laughed mirthlessly.

“Listen,” he said. “Let us come to some understanding. I am a member of the criminal classes, and you are a bishop of the English church. Perhaps the God you believe in may condescend to judge between us. The woman who was once your wife appealed to you when she was sick and penniless, and you disregarded her appeal. I, a poverty-stricken outcast supported her, gave her a home, and reverenced her as a sacred trust. 'Whether of them twain did the will of his father?’”

Everard stared at him in wide-eyed agitation. A customer entered with a book he had selected from the stall outside. Joyce went forward, received the money and returned to his former position by the Bishop.

“I received no appeal from her,” said the latter.

“You did, through me. She was too ill to write.”

“When was this?”

“Last November, a year ago.”

Everard reflected for a moment and then a sudden memory flashed upon him, and an expression of deep pain came over his face.

“God forgive me! I threw your letter into the fire unopened.”

“Might I ask your reason?” asked Joyce, feeling a grim joy in his cousin’s humiliation.

“I had been warned that you had gone to Fulminster on a begging errand—”

“Did the Rector have the iniquity to write you that?” burst in Joyce fiercely.

“It was not the Rector.”

“Who, then? I saw no one but him. I was simply seeking Madame Latour.”

“I name no names,” replied the Bishop, stiffly. “I am merely explaining. The letter, in fact, came by the same mail as yours. Little suspecting that you could address me on any subject unconnected with yourself, and keeping to my resolution to hold no further communication with you, I destroyed, as I say, your letter unopened. Believe me, the apology I tender to you—”

“Is neither here nor there,” said Joyce, coldly. “I am past feeling such slights. I suppose your correspondent was that she-devil Emmeline Winstanley. I congratulate you.” The Bishop made no reply, but paced backwards and forwards two or three times with bent head, along the book-lined shelves. Then he stopped and said abruptly:—

“Tell me the facts about Yvonne.”

The conciliatory mention of her by her Christian name thawed Joyce for the moment. He rapidly sketched events, while Everard listened, looking at him rigidly from under bent brows.

“I would have given the last drop of my blood rather than she should have suffered so.”

“So would I,” replied Joyce.

“Would to God I had known of it!”

“It was your own doing.”

“You are right. My uncharitableness towards you has brought its punishment.”

“I cannot say I am sorry,” said Joyce, grimly.

There was a short silence, compelled by the struggling emotions in each man’s heart. In Joyce’s there was war, a sense of victory, of the sweetness of revenge. He felt, too, that now Yvonne would indubitatively reject the Bishop’s offer of help. He had won the right to support her.

Suddenly her voice was heard from the back-parlour door.

“Do come. The tea is getting quite cold.”

Both men started. A quick flash came into Everard’s eyes and he made a hasty step forward. But Joyce checked him with a gesture.

“I had better prepare her for the surprise of seeing you.”

The Bishop nodded assent. Joyce ran to the street door to see that the boy had returned to his post, and, satisfied, left the Bishop and went to join Yvonne in their little sitting-room upstairs.

She had just entered, was lifting a plate of hot toast from the fender. She held it out threateningly with both hands.

“If it’s all dried up it is not my fault,” she scolded. “And oh! you know I don’t allow you to sit down in your shirt-sleeves!”

He made no reply, but took the plate mechanically from her and placed it on the table.

“What is the matter, Stephen?” she asked suddenly, scanning his face.

“Some one has called to see you, Yvonne.”

“Me?”

She looked at him for a puzzled moment. Then something in his face told her. She caught him by his shirt-sleeve.

“It can’t be Everard?” she cried, agitated.

“Yes. It is Everard.”

She grew deadly pale and her breath came fast.

“How has he managed to find me?”

“I don’t know. Possibly he will explain.”

Yvonne sat down by the table and put her hand to her heart.

“It is so sudden,” she said deprecatingly.

“Perhaps you would rather put off seeing him,” suggested Joyce.

“Oh no, no. I will see him now—if you don’t mind, Stephen, dear. I am quite strong again. Tell him to come. And don’t be unhappy about me.”

She smiled up at him and held out her hand. He took it in his and kissed it.

“My own brave, dear Yvonne,” he said impulsively. A flush and a grateful glance rewarded him.

He found the Bishop scanning the book backs.

“Will you let me show you up to the sitting-room?” said Joyce.

The Bishop bowed and followed. At the foot of the stairs he paused.

“I think it right to tell you,” he said, “that I have received authentic news of the death of Madame Latour’s first husband. The object of my sudden visit to England is to take her back with me as my wife.”

The unexpectedness of the announcement smote Joyce like a blast of icy air. The loftiness of the Bishop’s assurance dwarfed him to insignificance. As at previous crises of his life, the sudden check cowed the spirit yet under the prison yoke. His defiance vanished. He turned with one foot on the stair and one hand on the baluster and stared stupidly at the Bishop. The latter motioned to him to proceed. He obeyed mechanically, mounted, turned the handle of the sitting-room door in silence, and descended again to the shop.

No sooner was he alone than a swift consciousness of his moral rout made him hot with shame and anger. His heart rose in fierce revolt. Yvonne was free. Free to marry whom she liked. What right over her had this man who had cast her off, spent two whole years at the other end of the world without once troubling to enquire after her welfare? What right had the man to come and rob him of the one blessing that life held for him?

The prospect of life alone, without Yvonne, shimmered before him like a bleak landscape revealed by sheet-lightning. A panic shook him. A second flash revealed him to himself. This utter dependence upon Yvonne, this intense need of her that had gone on strengthening, week by week, and day by day, was love. Use, self-concentration, the mere unconcealed affection of daily life had kept it dormant as it grew. Now it awakened under the sudden terror of losing her. A thrill ran through his body. He loved her. She was free. This other set aside, he could marry her. He paced among the piles of books in strange excitement.

The boy, who had been rapping his heels against his box-seat by the door, strolled in to see what was doing. Joyce abruptly ordered him to put up the shutters and go home.

Meanwhile he made pretence to continue his work of cataloguing. But his brain was in a whirl. His eyes fell upon the marks of Yvonne’s hands and arms on the dust of the folio she had been handling. The mute testimony of their intimacy eloquently moved him. She was part and parcel of his life. He would not give her up without fierce fighting.

Then, in the midst of the glow came the fresh memory of his collapse. He sat down by the little deal table, where he was wont to write, and buried his face in his hands, and shivered. His manhood had gone. Nothing could ever restore it. Its semblance was liable to be shattered at any moment by an honest man’s self-assertion. It had perished during those awful years; not to be revived, even by the pure passion of love that was throbbing in his veins.

Too restless to sit long, he rose presently and walked about the shop, among the books. The close, dusty air suffocated him. He longed to go out, walk the streets, and shake off the burden that was round his neck. But the feeling that he ought, for Yvonne’s sake, to remain until the Bishop’s departure kept him an irritable prisoner. The minutes passed slowly. Outside was the ceaseless hum and hurry of the street: within, the flare of the gas-jets and the sound of his own purposeless tread. And so for two hours he waited, running the gamut of his emotions with maddening iteration. The terror of losing Yvonne brought at times the perspiration to his forehead. With feverish intensity he argued out his claim upon her. She could not throw him over to go and live with that proud, unsympathetic man who must for ever be to her a stranger. Then his jealous wrath burst forth again, and again came the old hated shiver of degradation. How dare he match himself against one who, with all his faults, had yet lived through his life a stainless gentleman?