'When will you come? See--I will write down my address. I have a flat, and it is ever so much better furnished than this, Sir. Will you come to-night? I shall be at home. There will be no one but Effie Wilmot. Oh! I am not going to talk about you, but about myself. I want your praise, Roland, and your sympathy. Both were so ready--once. Will you come to-night?' 'You will drive me mad, I think, Armorel!' 'Will you come?' He shook his head. 'I have got to tell you how I became rich, if you will listen. You must come and hear my news. Why, there is no one but you in all London who knew me when I lived on Samson alone with those old people. You will come to-night, Roland?' Again she laid her hand upon his shoulder. 'I will ask no questions about you--none at all. You will tell me what you please about yourself. But you must let me talk to you about myself, as frankly as in the old days. If you have got any kindly memory left of me at all, Roland, you will come.' He rose and lifted his shameful eyes to hers, so full of pity and of tears. 'Yes,' he said; 'I will do whatever you tell me.' CHAPTER VII A CANDID OPINION Youth in the London lodging-house! Youth quite poor--youth ambitious--youth with a possible future--youth meditating great things! Walk along the streets of Lodging-land--there are miles of such streets--and consider with trembling that the dingy houses contain thousands of young people--boys and girls--who have come to the city of golden pavements to make--not a fortune, unless that happens as well--but their name. In the long struggle before the lowest rung of the ladder is reached they endure hardness, but they complain not. Everything is going to be made up to them in the splendid time to come.