Hilliard listened intently, his eyes never stirring from her face.

“The change in me began when father came back to us, and I began to feel my freedom.  Then I wanted to get away, and to live by myself.  I thought of London—­I’ve told you how much I always thought of London—­but I hadn’t the courage to go there.  In Birmingham I began to change my old habits; but more in what I thought than what I did.  I wished to enjoy myself like other girls, but I couldn’t.  For one thing, I thought it wicked; and then I was so afraid of spending a penny—­I had so often known what it was to be in want of a copper to buy food.  So I lived quite alone; sat in my room every evening and read books.  You could hardly believe what a number of books I read in that year.  Sometimes I didn’t go to bed till two or three o’clock.”

“What sort of books?”

“I got them from the Free Library—­books of all kinds; not only novels.  I’ve never been particularly fond of novels; they always made me feel my own lot all the harder.  I never could understand what people mean when they say that reading novels takes them ’out of themselves.’  It was never so with me.  I liked travels and lives of people, and books about the stars.  Why do you laugh?”

“You escaped from yourself there, at all events.”

“At last I saw an advertisement in a newspaper—­a London paper in the reading-room—­which I was tempted to answer; and I got an engagement in London.  When the time came for starting I was so afraid and low-spirited that I all but gave it up.  I should have done, if I could have known what was before me.  The first year in London was all loneliness and ill-health.  I didn’t make a friend, and I starved myself, all to save money.  Out of my pound a week I saved several shillings—­just because it was the habit of my whole life to pinch and pare and deny myself.  I was obliged to dress decently, and that came out of my food.  It’s certain I must have a very good constitution to have gone through all that and be as well as I am to-day.”

“It will never come again,” said Hilliard.

“How can I be sure of that?  I told you once before that I’m often in dread of the future.  It would be ever so much worse, after knowing what it means to enjoy one’s life.  How do people feel who are quite sure they can never want as long as they live?  I have tried to imagine it, but I can’t; it would b_ too wonderful.”

“You may know it some day.”

Eve reflected.

“It was Patty Ringrose,” she continued, “who taught me to take life more easily.  I was astonished to find how much enjoyment she could get out of an hour or two of liberty, with sixpence to spend.  She did me good by laughing at me, and in the end I astonished her.  Wasn’t it natural that I should be reckless as soon as I got the chance?”

“I begin to understand.”