"Do you think she is the sort of girl who would marry poverty," she said, evasively, "poverty like this!" and she glanced round the room. "I won't ask her to!" Shiel exclaimed. "Whilst I have been lying in bed, ill, I have thought of many things--and have come to the conclusion I have no right ever to think of marrying. It is difficult for me to earn enough to keep one person in comfort--and I've lost all hope of ever earning enough to keep two." "Well, if you don't ask her," Lilian Rosenberg said, "there's one thing, she will never ask you. And I think you are remarkably well out of it. If you do ever marry, marry a girl that has grit--a girl that would be a real 'pal' to you--a girl that would help you to win fame!" CHAPTER XXVIII WHOM WILL HE MARRY? Had Lilian Rosenberg been able to see the effect of her conversation upon Shiel after she had left him, she would have been disappointed. He had, prior to this interview with Lilian Rosenberg, as he told her, made up his mind to abandon all idea of marrying Gladys Martin; and there is a possibility that had her name not been mentioned, had she not been recalled so vividly to his mind, he would have adhered to that resolution--at all events so long as he refrained from seeing her. But such is human nature--or at least man's nature--that directly Lilian Rosenberg had left him, Shiel's love for Gladys burst out with such wild, invigorated force that it swept reason and everything else before it. Gladys! He could think of nothing else! Every detail in her appearance, every word she had spoken, came back to him with exaggerated intensity. Her beauty was sublime. There was no one like her, no one that could inspire him with such a sense of ideality, no one that could lead him on to such dizzy heights of greatness. It was all nonsense to say, as Lilian Rosenberg had said, there were just as many good fish in the sea as had ever come out of it--there was only one Gladys. Hamar should never marry her--he would marry her himself. She must be told at once of Hamar's infamous designs. A mad desire to see her came over him, and disregardful of the doctor's orders that he should remain in bed several more days, he got up, and dressing as fast as his weak condition would allow him, took a taxi and drove to Waterloo. On reaching the Cottage, at Kew, he found Gladys at home, and to his great joy, alone. There is nothing that appeals to a woman more than a sick man, and Shiel, in coming to Gladys in his present condition, had unwittingly played a trump card. Had he appeared well and strong she would probably have received him none too cordially--for she was very tired of men just then; but the moment her eyes alighted on his thin cheeks and she saw the dark rings under his eyes, pity conquered. This man at least was not to blame--he was not of the same pattern as other men, he was not like so many men whose adulations had grown fulsome to her, and--he was totally unlike Hamar.