There were tears in her dark eyes, tears of boundless joy and abundant happiness. She had come there half expecting a rebuff, yet had found me ready and eager to forgive; therefore, in a few moments her emotion overcame her, and she hid her tear-stained face in her hands. The prophecy of the Woman of Evil had been fulfilled. Yet at what cost had I gained this felicity? At the cost of a guilty silence--a silence that shielded her from the exposure of some mysterious, unknown guilt. Such thoughts I endeavoured to cast from me in the dreamy happiness of those felicitous moments. Yet as I held Muriel in my arms and kissed her pale, tear-stained cheeks, I could not help reflecting upon the veil of mystery which surrounded the woman whose inexplicable influence had caused my love to return to me. In my sudden happiness there still remained the dregs of bitterness--the strange death of the man who had been my most intimate friend, and the demoniacal power possessed by the woman to whom I had unconditionally bound myself in return for Muriel's love. The words I uttered caused her to hesitate, to hold her breath, and look up at me with those dark, brilliant eyes which had so long ago held me beneath their spell. Again her hand trembled, again tears rose in her eyes, but at last, when I had repeated my sentence, she faltered a response. It was but a single word, but it caused my heart to bound for joy, and in an instant raised me to the seventh heaven of delight. Her response from that moment bound us in closer relationship than before. She had given me her promise to become my wife. CHAPTER TWENTY. ONE MAN'S HAND. In the hour that followed many were our mutual declarations, many were the kisses I imprinted upon those lips, with their true Cupid's bow, without which no woman's beauty is entirely perfect. From her conversation I gathered that the assistants at the great shop in the Holloway Road were treated, as they often are, as mere machines, the employers having no more regard for their health or mental recreation than for the cash balls which roll along the inclined planes to the cash-desk. Life within that great series of shops was mere drudgery and slavery, the galling bonds of which only those who have had experience of it can fully appreciate. "From the time we open till closing time we haven't a single moment's rest," she said, in reply to my question, "and with nearly eighty fines for breaking various rules, and a staff of tyrannical shop-walkers who are always either fining us or abusing us before the customers, things are utterly unbearable." "Yes," I said, indignantly, "the tyrannies of shop life ought to be exposed." "Indeed they ought," she agreed. "One of our rules fines us a shilling if after serving a customer we don't introduce at least two articles to her." "People don't like things they don't want pushed under their noses," I said. "It always annoys me."