"If you'll agree to say nothing to my mother, to write nothing to Basil, and not to bother your head about the rights and wrongs of it, I'll go to London and see Minna. If there's a glimmer of hope I'll do everything I can. If there isn't, I'll see Minna through. . . . I don't think I shall come back. I can't stay in this place much longer. It gobbles men up and doesn't even have the decency to digest them properly. . . . It's a machine and has no conscience about the past, no concern for the future. It darkens men's minds so that they live hideously and their horrible sins are visited upon their children. No, I shan't come back. I can't. . . ." "There is a great deal of wickedness in this place. It is God's will," said Francis. "Men's will. The will of men cheated and cozened by their own rapacity. . . . But that is neither here nor there. Will you agree to say nothing to my mother until you hear from me?" "I'll promise you that," said Francis with a little compunction, for he saw how dark would be the days of waiting with such a secret tugging at his heart and his wife babbling of her children's marriages. "How did you know? Did Mary tell you?" "Yes, Mary told me. Mary has been rather a trump about it." "I shall be able to talk to Mary," thought Francis, with a sigh of relief. * * * Serge spent the night packing and dismantling his studio. He destroyed a great many of his pictures, called up the porter and made him a present of his furniture and the clothes that were left after he had packed two bags. In the morning he went to fetch Annie Lipsett. He found her just leaving, but made her go back with him to see the boy. Him he hugged and kissed, and then he gave Annie a cheque for fifty pounds for his education. "And for God's sake," he said, "don't make him a gentleman. Put him to a trade. If he's any real good he'll get out of it. If he's only middling good he'll stay there and marry and die respectable. If he's bad--God help you; but he won't be that." Annie said: "You're going." "Yes. I'm going." She was very plucky and fought back her tears. Serge took her shoulders in his hands and said: "You and I have had a queer sort of love, an impersonal sort of meeting in Heaven here on earth. I never understood before what it must feel like to be a seraph--just a head and wings. We've been so busy fighting our way up out of a slimy pit that we haven't had time to think much about each other--only the boy." Annie's tears flowed freely and she clung to his hand and said: "You don't know what you've been to me, but I can tell you now. It was so much to have you for my friend in that time when I had no one. I loved you. . . ." "I know, I know." "But all that sort of love went away afterwards when I had the boy. It has been a great thing for him too. . . ." "I've learned a lot from him."