Hers; and with them what? A life of shame, a career such as she had regarded always with loathing and horror; such as she had told her mother that, whatever temptation might assail her, she had sufficient courage and strength of mind to avoid. And such a life, not with a young lover, the warmth of whose passion, whatever might be its depth, it was impossible to deny, but with a man no longer young, who pretended to no sentiment for her beyond admiration, and who, polished, courteous, and gentlemanly as he was, would probably look upon her as any other appanage of his wealth and position, and care for her no more. And yet, and yet were they to go on for ever--the long days of drudgery, the nights in the cheerless garret, the weary existence with the one ray of hope which illumined it, the love for Paul, soon necessarily to be quenched for ever? She could not bear to think of that. Should she give it up, fling all to the winds, tell her lover on his return, which she was now daily expecting, that she could stand it no longer; bid him take her and do with her as he willed--marry her or not, as he chose, but let her feel that there was something worth living for, some bond of union which, legal or illegal, lessened the hard exigences of daily life, and took something of the grimness off the aspect of the world? She was mad! Was that to be the end of all her cultivated coldness and self-restraint? Had she quietly, if not cheerfully, accepted the wretched life which she had been leading so long, with the one aim of establishing for herself a position, and was she now going to undo all that she had so patiently planned and so weariedly carried out in one moment of headstrong passion? Was the position which she hoped to acquire, for which she had so earnestly striven, to prove to be that of a poor man's mistress, where everything would have been lost and nothing gained? Nothing gained! Nothing? not Paul's love? No, she had that now; and she was quite sufficient woman of the world to know that in the chance of such a contingency as she had contemplated, she might not be long in losing it.