He answered her almost eagerly.

“I want to talk about Beatrice,” he declared.  “I want to tell you everything about her.  I know that you will understand.  We were brought up together in the same country place.  We were both thrown upon the world about the same time.  That was one thing, I suppose, which made us kindly disposed towards one another.  We corresponded always.  I commenced my unsuccessful fight in London.  I lived—­I can’t tell you how—­week by week, month by month.  I ate coarse food, I was a hanger-on to the fringe of everything in life which appealed to me, fed intellectually on the crumbs of free libraries and picture galleries.  I met no one of my own station—­I was at a public school and my people were gentlefolk—­or tastes.  I had no friends in London before whom I dared present myself, no money to join a club where I might have mixed with my fellows, no one to talk to or exchange a single idea with—­and I wasn’t always the gloomy sort of person I have become; in my younger days I loved companionship.  And the women—­my landlady’s daughter, with dyed hair, a loud voice, slatternly in the morning, a flagrant imitation of her less honest sisters at night!  Who else?  Where was I to meet women when I didn’t even know men?  I spent my poor holidays at Detton Magna.  Our very loneliness brought Beatrice and me closer together.  We used to walk in those ugly fields around Detton Magna and exchanged the story of our woes.  She was a teacher at the national school.  The children weren’t pleasant, their parents were worse.  The drudgery was horrible, and there wasn’t any escape for her.  Sometimes she would sob as we sat side by side.  She, too, wanted something out of life, as I did, and there seemed nothing but that black wall always before us.  I think that we clung together because we shared a common misery.  We talked endlessly of a way out.  For me what was there?  There was no one to rob—­I wasn’t clever enough.  There was no way I could earn money, honestly or dishonestly.  And for her, buried in that Derbyshire village amongst the collieries, where there was scarcely a person who hadn’t the taint of the place upon them—­what chance was there for her?  There was nothing she could do, either.  I knew in my heart that we were both ready for evil things, if by evil things we could make our escape.  And we couldn’t.  So we tried to lose ourselves in the only fields left for such as we.  We read poetry.  We tried to live in that unnatural world where the brains only are nourished and the body languishes.  It was a morbid, unhealthy existence, but I plodded along and so did she.  Then her weekly letters became different.  For the first time she wrote me with reserves.  I took a day’s vacation and I went down to Detton Magna to see what had happened.”

“That was the day,” she interrupted softly, “when—­”

“That was the day,” he assented.  “I remember so well getting out of the train and walking up that long, miserable street.  School wasn’t over, and I went straight to her cottage, as I have often done before.  There was a change.  Her cheap furniture had gone.  It was like one of those little rooms we had dreamed of.  There was a soft carpet upon the floor, Chippendale furniture, flowers, hothouse fruit, and on the mantelpiece—­the photograph of a man.”