"Oh, his rank didn't dazzle me," she murmured absently, "they seem all alike, and when they find out that I am not a certain kind they ask me to marry them... But if I could only get back to the Mill on the Rose, Mr. Bulstrode! If I might again see it as I used, if I could see you there as I used to see you--walk by your side; row with you on the river; if I could hear the wheel again as I used to hear it, then"--her voice was delicious, a very note of the river of which she spoke. Oh, she must act well, there was no doubt about that; no wonder she had been a success: "If I might walk there with you--titles, even my art and all the rest"--she did not apparently dare to look at him as she spoke, but fixed her eyes across the room as if she saw back twelve years into ----shire ... "if I could _only, only_ go back again with you!" In spite of himself, carried away by her voice, Bulstrode said: "You shall, you shall go back with me!" "Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she gave a little cry and caught his hand, steadying herself by the act. "Wait," he murmured, "wait, let me think it all out." And, as she had done, Bulstrode walked over to the window, to the balcony where the fresh air met his face, where the breath from the sea fanned him, blended with the scent of the meadow. Before Bulstrode the first reflection of the morning lay like silver on the sea. When he finally went back into the room, Felicia Warren had not moved. Just as he left her, she sat, deep back into the divan, leaning on her hand, with something like the glory of a dream on her face. Standing in front of her, he said slowly: "I'm entirely free. No one in the world depends upon me. I have no tie, or bond to my life. I have freedom and money. So far--if what you say is all true, don't start so, for I believe it, every word--so far, I have spoiled your life." But the girl shook her head. "Oh, no, _you haven't_," she assured him. "We make our own lives, I expect, and I told you that I could remember everything you ever said to me in the past--you never lied to me, and you were never anything but kind and dear. I've been a fool, a fool!" Sitting there in her fragile evening dress, its ruffles torn where they had trailed across the pebbles in the street, the disorder of the room around her, its evidence of a homeless, wandering life, she seemed like a bit of flotsam that, no matter from what ship it had been blown, had at last drifted along the shore to his feet. Unhappy and deserted, she reached the very tenderest part of Bulstrode's nature. Cost him what it would, he must save her. But, as though the girl, with an instinctive fineness divined, she rose and going over to him very gently, laid her hand on his shoulder: