every softening influence, was bound to work a subtle and relentless change.  The man of one idea is apt to starve his soul in his effort to make it subservient to the furtherance of his solitary aim.  To be a successful man, to win by his own unaided effort a position which would entitle him to meet Gladys Graham on equal ground, such was his ambition, and it never did occur to him that this very striving might make him unfit in other ways to be her mate.  His isolated life, absolutely unrelieved by any social intercourse with his fellows, made him silent by choice, still and self-contained in manner, abrupt of speech.  In his unconsciousness it never occurred to him that it is the little courtesies and graces of speech and action which commend a man first to the notice of the woman he wants to win.  He was, though he did not know it, a melancholy spectacle; but his awakening was at hand.

Gladys made her second call at the house in Colquhoun Street, as before, early in the day.  It seemed very familiar, though it was many months since she had passed that way.  It seemed a more hopeless and squalid street than she had yet thought it.  She picked her steps daintily through the greasy mud, holding her skirts high enough to show a most bewitching pair of feet, cased in Parisian boots, only there was nobody visible to admire them but a grimy butcher’s boy, with a basket on his head, and he stared with all his might.

The warehouse door, contrary to the old custom, stood wide open, as if inviting all comers.  Gladys gave a glance along the passage which led to the living-rooms, but was not moved to revisit them.  She went at once up the grimy staircase, giving a little light cough as she neared the landing, a herald of her coming.  She heard quite distinctly the grating of the stool on the floor, and a step coming towards her—­a step which even now sounded quite familiarly in her ears.

‘It is I—­Gladys,’ she said, trying to speak quite naturally, but conscious of a shrinking embarrassment which made her cheeks nervously flush.  ‘The door was open, so I came right in.  How are you, Walter?’

In his face shone something of the old bright friendliness, but as she looked at the shabby youth, with his unshaved face and threadbare clothes, her fastidious eye disapproved of him just as it had disapproved of him when they met, boy and girl, for the first time in the rooms below.

‘I am quite well,’ he answered in his quick, abrupt unsmiling manner.  ’But why do you always come without any warning?  If you let me know, I should be ready for you.  I am always busy in the morning, and a fellow who has so much hard work to do can’t always be in trim to receive ladies.’

It was rather an ungracious greeting, which Gladys was quick enough to resent.  The gentle meekness of the girl had merged itself into the dignity of the woman, which insists upon due deference being paid.

‘I am quite sorry if I intrude, Walter,’ she said rather stiffly.  ’I shall not keep you long.  All the same, I am coming in to sit down for a little, as I have something very particular to speak to you about.’