And the girl made no further protest, when he handed her into the cab, an inconvenient four-wheeler which had responded to his signal, and, after giving the driver the address which she had indicated, took his place silently beside her. Perhaps something of Rainham's own lethargy had infected her, after a scene so feverish; or perhaps she could not but feel dimly, and in a manner not to be analysed, how that, distant and apart as they two seemed, yet within the last hour, by Rainham's action, between her life and his a subtile, invisible chord had been stretched, so that the order of her going might well rest with him. She cast furtive glances at him from time to time as he sat back, obscure in his corner, gazing out with eyes which saw nothing at the blurred gas-lamps, and the red flashes of the more rapid vehicles which outstripped them. And now that the first stupefying effect of his intervention was wearing away--it seemed like a mad scene in a theatre, or some monstrous dream, so surprising and unreal--her primitive consciousness awoke, and set her wondering, inquiring, with bewilderment that was akin to terror, into the motives and bearing of their joint conduct. It had seemed to her natural enough then, as do the most grotesque of our sleeping visions when they are passing; but now that she was awake, relieved from the coercion of his eyes, she was roundly amazed at her own complicity in so stupendous a fiction. What had he made her do? Why had he taken this sin of another's on his own shoulders? Eve's piteous cry of "Philip!" at his entry recurred to her--the intimate nature of her appeal. The scent was promising; but it opened out vistas of a loyalty too fantastic and generous to be true. Her mature cynicism of a girl of the people, disillusioned and abused, flouted the idea. Did she not know "gentlemen" and the nature of their love? The girl was hardened by ill-usage, bitter from long brooding over her shame. She was glad when he turned to her at last, breaking a silence which the sullen roar of London outside and beyond them, the dreary rattling of the cab, seemed only to heighten, with a sudden gesture of despair. "If I had only known! If you had only told me two years ago!" The suppressed passion in his voice, his air, terrified the girl. She bent forward trembling.