“I went about, day after day, in a dazed state, trying to make up my mind to leave the people, but I couldn’t.  I don’t know how it was, I had never felt so afraid of being thrown out into the world again.  I suppose it was bodily weakness, want of proper food, and overwork.  I began to feel that the whole world was wronging me.  Was there never to be anything for me but slaving?  Was I never to have any enjoyment of life, like other people?  I felt a need of pleasure, I didn’t care how or what.  I was always in a fever; everything was exaggerated to me.  What was going to be my future?—­I kept asking myself.  Was it only to be hard work, miserably paid, till I died?  And I should die at last without having known what it was to enjoy my life.  When I was allowed to go out—­it was very seldom—­I walked aimlessly about the streets, watching all the girls I passed, and fancying they all looked so happy, all enjoying their life so.  I was growing thin and pale.  I coughed, and began to think I was consumptive.  A little more of it and I believe I should have become so really.

“It came to an end, suddenly and unexpectedly.  All three, mother and daughters, had been worrying me through a whole morning, and at last one of them called me a downright fool, and said I wasn’t worth the bread I ate.  I turned on them.  I can’t remember a word I said, but speak I did, and in a way that astonished them; they shrank back from me, looking pale and frightened.  I felt in that moment that I was a thousand times their superior; I believe I told them so.  Then I rushed up to my room, packed my box, and went out into the street.

“I had just turned a corner, when some one came up to me, and it was Mr. Bolter.  He had followed me from the house.  He laughed, said I had done quite right, and asked me if I had any money.  I shook my head.  He walked on by me, and talked.  The end was, that he found me rooms, and provided for me.

“I had not the least affection for him, but he had pleasant, gentlemanly ways, and it scarcely even occurred to me to refuse his offers.  I was reckless; what happened to me mattered little, as long as I had not to face hard work.  I needed rest.  For one in my position there was, I saw well enough, only one way of getting it.  I took that way.”

Ida had told this in a straightforward, unhesitating manner, not meeting her companion’s gaze, yet not turning away.  One would have said that judgments upon her story were indifferent to her; she simply related past events.  In a moment, she resumed.

“Do you remember, on the night when you first met me, a man following us in the street?”

Waymark nodded.

“He was a friend of Alfred Bolter’s, and sometimes we met him when we went to the theatre, and such places.  That is the only person I ever hated from the first sight,—­hated and dreaded in a way I could not possibly explain.”

“But why do you mention him?” asked Waymark.  “What is his name?”