In the parlour adjoining George Cannon was seated at the table. When Hilda saw him and their eyes met, she was comforted; a wave of tenderness seemed to agitate her. She realized that this man was hers, and the realization was marvellously reassuring. The sound of the piano descended delicately from the drawing-room as from a great distance. From the kitchen came the muffled clatter of earthenware and occasionally a harsh, loud voice; it was the hour of relaxed discipline in the kitchen, where amid the final washing-up and much free discussion and banter, Florrie was recommencing her career on a grander basis. Hilda closed the door very quietly. When she had closed it and was shut in with George Cannon her emotion grew intenser. "I think she'll get off now," she whispered, standing near the door. "Have you told her?" Hilda nodded. "What does she say?" Hilda raised her eyebrows: "Oh!... Well, she says we'd better keep it quiet, and make the engagement as short as possible." She blushed. "Look here," said George. "Let's go out, eh?" "But--what will people say?" "What the devil does it matter what they say? I want you to come out with me." The whispered oath, and his defiant smile, enchanted her. "We can go out by the area steps," he continued. "There's two of 'em sitting in the hall, but the front door's shut. Do go and get your hat." She left the room with an obedient smile. Pushing open Sarah's door very gently, she groped on the hooks behind it for her hat. "It won't matter about gloves--in the dark," she thought. "Besides, I mustn't disturb her." Before drawing-to the door she looked again at the bed. There was neither sound nor movement. Probably Sarah Gailey slept. The dim vision of the form on the bed and the blue spark of gas in the corner produced in Hilda a mood of poignant and yet delicious sorrow. "Why, what's the matter?" George Cannon asked when she had returned to the parlour. She knew that her eyes were humid with tears. Both her arms were raised above her head as she fixed the hat. This act of fixing the hat in George's presence gave her a new pleasure. She smiled at him. "Nothing!" she said, whispering mysteriously. "I think she's gone off. I'm so glad. You know she really does suffer dreadfully." His look was uncomprehending; but she did not care. The anticipation of going out with him was now utterly absorbing her. He waited with his hand on the gas-tap till she was ready, and then he lowered the gas. "Wait a moment," she whispered at the door, and with a gesture called him back into the room from the flagged passage leading to the area steps. On the desk was his evening glass of milk, which he drank cold in summer. She offered it to him in the twilit room like an enraptured handmaid. He had forgotten it. The fact that he had forgotten it and she had remembered it yet further increased her strange, mournful, ecstatic bliss. "Have some," he whispered, when he had drunk.