“What a lot of stuff you’ve written,” he said.  “I shall never be able to get this into one number.”

“I didn’t intend you should.  It’s to be used in instalments, if it’s good enough.  I did it all in advance, because I’m going away.”

“Going away!” he cried, arresting himself in the midst of an inhalation of smoke.  “Where?”

“I don’t know,” she said wearily.

He looked alarm and interrogation.

“I am going to leave the Goldsmiths,” she said.  “I haven’t decided exactly what to do next.”

“I hope you haven’t quarrelled with them.”

“No, no, not at all.  In fact they don’t even know I am going.  I only tell you in confidence.  Please don’t say anything to anybody.  Good-bye.  I may not come across you again.  So this may be a last good-bye.”  She extended her hand; he took it mechanically.

“I have no right to pry into your confidence,” he said anxiously, “but you make me very uneasy.”  He did not let go her hand, the warm touch quickened his sympathy.  He felt he could not part with her and let her drift into Heaven knew what.  “Won’t you tell me your trouble?” he went on.  “I am sure it is some trouble.  Perhaps I can help you.  I should be so glad if you would give me the opportunity.”

The tears struggled to her eyes, but she did not speak.  They stood in silence, with their hands still clasped, feeling very near to each other, and yet still so far apart.

“Cannot you trust me?” he asked.  “I know you are unhappy, but I had hoped you had grown cheerfuller of late.  You told me so much at our first meeting, surely you might trust me yet a little farther.”

“I have told you enough,” she said at last “I cannot any longer eat the bread of charity; I must go away and try to earn my own living.”

“But what will you do?”

“What do other girls do?  Teaching, needlework, anything.  Remember, I’m an experienced teacher and a graduate to boot.”  Her pathetic smile lit up the face with tremulous tenderness.

“But you would be quite alone in the world,” he said, solicitude vibrating in every syllable.

“I am used to being quite alone in the world.”

The phrase threw a flash of light along the backward vista of her life with the Goldsmiths, and filled his soul with pity and yearning.

“But suppose you fail?”

“If I fail—­” she repeated, and rounded off the sentence with a shrug.  It was the apathetic, indifferent shrug of Moses Ansell; only his was the shrug of faith in Providence, hers of despair.  It filled Raphael’s heart with deadly cold and his soul with sinister forebodings.  The pathos of her position seemed to him intolerable.