The two sat with their heads together over the inarticulate drawing till long past midnight. By degrees it became intelligible to the novice. Shortly it opened up before him into a possibility,--a thing practicable, a new hope. When he went back to Guildford Street in the early morning,--the morning which was still night,--his head was full of the new idea. He was no longer an aimless, half-desperate man, detached from everything but the one absorbing madness which had taken possession of his empty life; he had linked himself on again to fact and nature, recovered his identity, his independence, himself. The change that lay before him,--palpable, visible, unmistakable change from one hemisphere to another, from doing nothing to hard, open-air, undisguisable work,--had dispersed already the mists which made a mystery and vision of all former changes. He stretched out his hands to the past, even as he lifted them to the future. It was but this unwholesome, unreal interval which had made life itself look as a dream and a thing untrue. CHAPTER XII. MILLICENT’S NEW START. While Ben was thus, unconsciously to himself, being drawn back across the threshold of wholesome life, the morning was passing in a very different way at No. 10, Guildford Street. The packing was not yet finished, which of itself was a troublesome matter, and, to tell the truth, Mrs. Tracy’s feeling was that she would be glad to get Millicent safely away, and that she did not know what had come over the girl. Notwithstanding her displeasure with her, and fears as to her state of mind, Mrs. Tracy took care to provide a nice little supper for Millicent, on that last night,--such as her soul loved. The two ladies were rather fond of nice little suppers. They dined very hurriedly and quietly in the middle of the day, eschewing hot and dainty dishes and everything that had a good odour, lest anybody should call; and accordingly, in the evening, when they were free, and could indulge themselves without any scruples about gentility, they made up for their self-denial by having something they liked, which was generally of a savoury kind. They supped comfortably after the labour of packing, and refreshed themselves ere they went to bed. It was at a late hour, and they had the prospect of but a short night’s rest, for they were to start very early in the morning; and naturally this, their last night upon English soil, had a certain pensiveness about it, notwithstanding the savoury fragrance and comfort of their favourite meal. ‘It seems strange to think that it is the last night,’ said Mrs. Tracy, with not inappropriate reflectiveness. ‘How many things have happened to us within these walls, Millicent! And perhaps we may never enter them again.’ ‘I hope not, I am sure,’ said her daughter; ‘a more dreary set of rooms I never was in. If we cannot make out something better than this, I should never wish to come back at all.’