"She's ill. Fair gone to pieces. But the doctor says she'll soon be all right again if we take care of her."

It was early evening of Sunday. They were going slowly up the steep hill that winds, westward and southward, toward the heights of Wimbledon.

He had just told her that Violet had come back.

"I couldn't in common decency turn her out."

In a long silence he struggled to find words for what he had to say next. She saw him struggling and came to his help.

"Ranny, you're going to take her back," she said.

"What must you think of me?"

"Think of you? I wouldn't have you different." The whole spirit of her love for him was in those words.

She continued. "You see, dear, it comes to the same thing. If you didn't take her back I couldn't marry you, for it wouldn't be you. You'll have to take her."

"You talk as if I'd nobody but her to think of. Look what she's making me do to you—"

"I'm strong enough to bear it and she isn't. She'll go straight to the bad if we don't look after her."

"That's it. She said there was nothing but the streets for her." He brooded. "If I was a rich man I could divorce her and give her an allowance to live away. I can't stand it, Winny, when I think of you."

"You needn't think of me, dear. It isn't as if I hadn't known."

"How could you know?"

"I knew all the time she'd come back—some day."

"Yes. But if Father hadn't died when he did we should have been safe married. We missed it by a day. Mercier'd have married her two years ago. If I'd had thirty pounds then it couldn't have happened. But I was a damned fool. I should have thought of you then—I should have let everything else go and married you."

Slowly, drop by drop, he drank his misery. But she had savored sorrow so far off that now that the cup was brought to her it had lost half its bitterness.

"You couldn't have done different, even then, dear. Don't worry about me. It's not as if I hadn't been happy with you. I've had you—reelly—Ranny, all these years."

But the happiness that by way of comfort she held out to him was the very dregs of Ranny's cup.

"That's it," he said. "I don't know how it's going to be now. She's the same, somehow, and yet different."

It was his way of expressing the fact that Violet's suffering had given her a soul, and that this soul, this subtler and more inscrutable essence of her, would not necessarily be good. It might even be malignant. Most certainly it would be hostile. It would come between them.

"It's a good thing the children'll be at school now—out of her way."

"P'raps she's better—kinder, p'raps."

"I don't know about that, Winny. I'm afraid. Anyhow, it'll never be the same for you and me."

He paused, and then seeing suddenly the full extent of their calamity, he broke out.

"What'll you do, Winny?"

"I'll ask Mr. Randall if he'll take me on."

"You won't stay here?"

"No. Better not. I mustn't be too near, this time. That was the mistake I made before. And you've got your mother."

"And what have you got?" he cried, fiercely.

"I've got plenty—all I've ever had. These things don't go away, dear."

They stood still, looking before them, with their unspoken misery in their eyes.

At their feet, down there, creeping low on the ground, spreading its packed roofs for miles over the land that had once been green fields, its red and purple smoldering and smoking in the autumn mist and sunset, there lay the Paradise of Little Clerks.

They turned and went slowly toward it down the hill.

THE END