She was a woman who once was very fair to look at, who was fair now, despite her poverty. She was not more than twenty-five years of age, but she looked older; there was no wedding-ring on her finger, and she was too poor for adornment of any kind about her person. There was beauty in her, however; the beauty that lies in resignation. And now, as Saul Fielding looked at her furtively, he noticed, with evident inward fear, a certain kind of sad resolution in her manner which tempered the signs of long suffering that dwelt in her face. He put his hand timidly upon her once, and said in a troubled voice. 'You have no flannel petticoat on, Jane.' 'No, Saul,' she answered cheerfully; 'I have pledged it.' An impressive silence followed. As the darkness that fell upon Egypt could be felt, so the silence that fell upon this room spoke: with bitter, brazen tongue. 'I have been out all the afternoon,' she said presently. 'First I went to----you know where.' Her soft voice faltered, and carried the meaning of the vague words to his sense. 'And saw her?' he asked wistfully. 'Yes; she was playing on the door-step. She looked so beautiful! I--I kissed her!' All the love that woman's heart can feel, all the tenderness of which woman's love is capable, were expressed in the tone in which she uttered these simple words. She placed her fingers on her lips, and dwelt upon the memory of the kiss with tearful eyes, with heart that ached with excess of love. 'Did I tell you that last week I tried again to get work, Saul?' 'No,' he said; 'you failed!' As if he knew for certain with what result. 'Yes; I failed,' she repeated sadly. 'I ask myself sometimes if I am a man,' exclaimed Saul, in contempt of himself, spurning himself as it were; 'if I have anything of a man's spirit left within me. Mrs. Naldret said something of that sort to me this very night--not unkindly, but with a good purpose. When I think of myself as I was many years ago, it seems to me that I am transformed. And the future! Good God! what lies in it for us?' 'I am a tie upon you, Saul.' 'A tie upon me!' he said, in a tone of wonder. 'Jane, you are my salvation! But for you I should have drifted into God knows what. You are at once my joy and my remorse.' He took from the mantelshelf a broken piece of looking-glass, and gazed at the reflection of his face. A bold and handsome face, but with deeper lines in it than his years, which were not more than thirty-two or three, warranted. Strong passion and dissipation had left striking marks behind them, but his clear blue eyes were as yet undimmed, and shone with a lustre which denoted that there was vigour still in him. His mouth was large, and the lips were the most noticeable features in his face; they were the lips of one to whom eloquence came as a natural gift, firm, and tremulous when need be. The change that he saw in himself as he looked back to the time gone by gave point and bitterness to his next words.