“I trust you—­that’s enough.  I have absolute faith in you.  Answer his letter in the way you think best, and never speak to me of the money again.  It’s yours; make what use of it you like.”

“Then I shall use it,” said Eve, after a pause, “to pay for a lodging in Birmingham.  I couldn’t live much longer at home.  If I’m here, I can get books out of the library, and time won’t drag so.  And I shall be near you.”

“Do so, by all means.”

As if more completely to dismiss the unpleasant subject, they walked into another room.  Hilliard began to speak again of his scheme for providing a place where they could meet and talk at their ease.  Eve now entered into it with frank satisfaction.

“Have you said anything yet to Mr. Narramore?” she asked at length.

“No.  I have never felt inclined to tell him.  Of course I shall some day.  But it isn’t natural to me to talk of this kind of thing, even with so intimate a friend.  Some men couldn’t keep it to themselves:  for me the difficulty is to speak.”

“I asked again, because I have been thinking—­mightn’t Mr. Narramore be able to help me to get work?”

Hilliard repelled the suggestion with strong distaste.  On no account would he seek his friend’s help in such a matter.  And Eve said no more of it.

On her return journey to Dudley, between eight and nine o’clock, she looked cold and spiritless.  Her eyelids dropped wearily as she sat in the corner of the carriage with some papers on her lap, which Hilliard had given her.  Rain had ceased, and the weather seemed turning to frost.  From Dudley station she had a walk of nearly half an hour, to the top of Kate’s Hill.

Kate’s Hill is covered with an irregular assemblage of old red-tiled cottages, grimy without, but sometimes, as could be seen through an open door admitting into the chief room, clean and homely-looking within.  The steep, narrow alleys leading upward were scarce lighted; here and there glimmered a pale corner-lamp, but on a black night such as this the oil-lit windows of a little shop, and the occasional gleam from doors, proved very serviceable as a help in picking one’s path.  Towards the top of the hill there was no paving, and mud lay thick.  Indescribable the confusion of this toilers’ settlement—­houses and workshops tumbled together as if by chance, the ways climbing and winding into all manner of pitch-dark recesses, where eats prowled stealthily.  In one spot silence and not a hint of life; in another, children noisily at play amid piles of old metal or miscellaneous rubbish.  From the labyrinth which was so familiar to her, Eve issued of a sudden on to a sort of terrace, where the air blew shrewdly:  beneath lay cottage roofs, and in front a limitless gloom, which by daylight would have been an extensive northward view, comprising the towns of Bilston and Wolverhampton.  It was now a black gulf, without form and void, sputtering fire.  Flames that leapt out of nothing, and as suddenly disappeared; tongues of yellow or of crimson, quivering, lambent, seeming to snatch and devour and then fall back in satiety.  When a cluster of these fires shot forth together, the sky above became illumined with a broad glare, which throbbed and pulsed in the manner of sheet-lightning, though more lurid, and in a few seconds was gone.