“Yours ever gratefully,

     “ESTHER ANSELL.”

There were tears in Esther’s eyes when she finished, and she was penetrated with admiration of her own generosity in so freely admitting Mrs. Goldsmith’s and in allowing that her patron got nothing out of the bargain.  She was doubtful whether the sentence about the high sphere was satirical or serious.  People do not know what they mean almost as often as they do not say it.

Esther put the letter into an envelope and placed it on the open writing-desk she kept on her dressing-table.  She then packed a few toilette essentials in a little bag, together with some American photographs of her brother and sisters in various stages of adolescence.  She was determined to go back empty-handed as she came, and was reluctant to carry off the few sovereigns of pocket-money in her purse, and hunted up a little gold locket she had received, while yet a teacher, in celebration of the marriage of a communal magnate’s daughter.  Thrown aside seven years ago, it now bade fair to be the corner-stone of the temple; she had meditated pledging it and living on the proceeds till she found work, but when she realized its puny pretensions to cozen pawnbrokers, it flashed upon her that she could always repay Mrs. Goldsmith the few pounds she was taking away.  In a drawer there was a heap of manuscript carefully locked away; she took it and looked through it hurriedly, contemptuously.  Some of it was music, some poetry, the bulk prose.  At last she threw it suddenly on the bright fire which good Mary O’Reilly had providentially provided in her room; then, as it flared up, stricken with remorse, she tried to pluck the sheets from the flames; only by scorching her fingers and raising blisters did she succeed, and then, with scornful resignation, she instantly threw them back again, warming her feverish hands merrily at the bonfire.  Rapidly looking through all her drawers, lest perchance in some stray manuscript she should leave her soul naked behind her, she came upon a forgotten faded rose.  The faint fragrance was charged with strange memories of Sidney.  The handsome young artist had given it her in the earlier days of their acquaintanceship.  To Esther to-night it seemed to belong to a period infinitely more remote than her childhood.  When the shrivelled rose had been further crumpled into a little ball and then picked to bits, it only remained to inquire where to go; what to do she could settle when there.  She tried to collect her thoughts.  Alas! it was not so easy as collecting her luggage.  For a long time she crouched on the fender and looked into the fire, seeing in it only fragmentary pictures of the last seven years—­bits of scenery, great Cathedral interiors arousing mysterious yearnings, petty incidents of travel, moments with Sidney, drawing-room episodes, strange passionate scenes with herself as single performer, long silent watches of study and aspiration, like the souls of the burned manuscripts