In rapid sentences she told the story of her successive humiliations, recounted her sufferings at the hands of Jessica and Beatrice and Samuel Barmby.  When she ceased, there were tears in her eyes.

‘Has Barmby been here again?’ Tarrant asked sternly.

’Yes.  He has been twice, and talked in just the same way, and I had to sit still before him—­’

‘Has he said one word that—?’

‘No, no,’ she interrupted hastily.  ’He’s only a fool—­not man enough to—­’

‘That saves me trouble,’ said Tarrant; ’I have only to treat him like a fool.  My poor darling, what vile torments you have endured!  And you pretend that you would rather live on this fellow’s interested generosity—­for, of course, he hopes to be rewarded—­ than throw the whole squalid entanglement behind you and be a free, honest woman, even if a poor one?’

‘I see no freedom.’

’You have lost all your love for me.  Well, I can’t complain of that.  But bear my name you shall, and be supported by me.  I tell you that it was never possible for me actually to desert you and the little one—­never possible.  I shirked a duty as long as I could; that’s all it comes to.  I loafed and paltered until the want of a dinner drove me into honesty.  Try to forget it, dear Nancy.  Try to forgive me, my dearest!’

She was dry-eyed again, and his appeal seemed to have no power over her emotions.

‘You are forgetting,’ she said practically, ’that I have lived on money to which I had no right, and that I—­or you—­can be forced to repay it.’

’Repaid it must be, whether demanded or not.  Where does Barmby live?  Perhaps I could see him to-night.’

‘What means have you of keeping us all alive?’

’Some of my work has been accepted here and there; but there’s something else I have in mind.  I don’t ask you to become a poverty-stricken wife in the ordinary way.  I can’t afford to take a house.  I must put you, with the child, into as good lodgings as I can hope to pay for, and work on by myself, just seeing you as often as you will let me.  Even if you were willing, it would be a mistake for us to live together.  For one thing, I couldn’t work under such conditions; for another, it would make you a slave.  Tell me:  are you willing to undertake the care of the child, if nothing else is asked of you?’

Nancy gave him a disdainful smile, a smile like those of her girlhood.

‘I’m not quite so feeble a creature as you think me.’

’You would rather have the child to yourself, than be living away from him?’

‘If you have made up your mind, why trouble to ask such questions?’

’Because I have no wish to force burdens upon you.  You said just now that you could see little prospect of freedom in such a life as I have to offer you.  I thought you perhaps meant that the care of the child would—­’

‘I meant nothing,’ Nancy broke in, with fretful impatience.