He touched her hand again, and left the room without looking back. Before the door had closed behind him, Olga ran forward with a stifled cry. The door was shut. She stood before it with tears in her eyes, her fingers clenched together on her breast, and sobbed miserably. For nearly half an hour she sat by the fire, head on hands, deeply brooding. In the house there was not a sound. All at once it seemed to her that a voice called, uttering her name; she started, her blood chilled with fear. The voice was her mother's; she seemed still to hear it, so plainly had it been audible, coming from she knew not where. She ran to her hat and jacket, which lay in a corner of the room, put them on with feverish haste, and fled out into the street. CHAPTER XXIX "I will be frank with you, Piers," said Daniel Otway, as he sat by the fireside in his shabby lodgings, his feet on the fender, a cigarette between his fingers. He looked yellow and dried up; shivered now and then, and had a troublesome cough. "If I could afford to be generous, I would be; I should enjoy it. It's one of the worst evils of poverty, that a man can seldom obey the promptings of his better self. I can't give you these letters; can't afford to do so. You have glanced through them; you see they really are what I said. The question is, what are they worth to you?" Piers looked at the threadbare carpet, reflected, spoke. "I'll give you fifty pounds." A smile crept from the corners of Daniel's shrivelled lips to his bloodshot eye. "Why are you so anxious to have them," he said, "I don't know and don't ask. But if they are worth fifty to you, they are worth more. You shall have them for two hundred." And at this figure the bundle of letters eventually changed hands. It was a serious drain on Piers Otway's resources, but he could not bargain long, the talk sickened him. And when the letters were in his possession, he felt a joy which had no equivalent in terms of cash. He said to himself that he had bought them for Olga. In a measure, of course, for all who would be relieved by knowing that Mrs. Hannaford had told the truth; but first and foremost for Olga. On Olga he kept his thoughts. He was persuading himself that in her he saw his heart's desire.