him.  One could not go on like this without the relief of some oblivion.  If he could only get drunk, keep drunk till this business was decided and he knew whether he must give himself up or no.  He had now no fear at all of people suspecting him; only fear of himself—­fear that he might go and give himself up.  Now he could see the girl; the danger from that was as nothing compared with the danger from his own conscience.  He had promised Keith not to see her.  Keith had been decent and loyal to him—­good old Keith!  But he would never understand that this girl was now all he cared about in life; that he would rather be cut off from life itself than be cut off from her.  Instead of becoming less and less, she was becoming more and more to him—­experience strange and thrilling!  Out of deep misery she had grown happy—­through him; out of a sordid, shifting life recovered coherence and bloom, through devotion to him him, of all people in the world!  It was a miracle.  She demanded nothing of him, adored him, as no other woman ever had—­it was this which had anchored his drifting barque; this—­and her truthful mild intelligence, and that burning warmth of a woman, who, long treated by men as but a sack of sex, now loves at last.

And suddenly, mastering his craving to get drunk, he made towards Soho.  He had been a fool to give those keys to Keith.  She must have been frightened by his visit; and, perhaps, doubly miserable since, knowing nothing, imagining everything!  Keith was sure to have terrified her.  Poor little thing!

Down the street where he had stolen in the dark with the dead body on his back, he almost ran for the cover of her house.  The door was opened to him before he knocked, her arms were round his neck, her lips pressed to his.  The fire was out, as if she had been unable to remember to keep warm.  A stool had been drawn to the window, and there she had evidently been sitting, like a bird in a cage, looking out into the grey street.  Though she had been told that he was not to come, instinct had kept her there; or the pathetic, aching hope against hope which lovers never part with.

Now that he was there, her first thoughts were for his comfort.  The fire was lighted.  He must eat, drink, smoke.  There was never in her doings any of the “I am doing this for you, but you ought to be doing that for me” which belongs to so many marriages, and liaisons.  She was like a devoted slave, so in love with the chains that she never knew she wore them.  And to Laurence, who had so little sense of property, this only served to deepen tenderness, and the hold she had on him.  He had resolved not to tell her of the new danger he ran from his own conscience.  But resolutions with him were but the opposites of what was sure to come; and at last the words: 

“They’ve arrested someone,” escaped him.