For she recognized with a sob of bitterness that these brooding months, when her child, thrusting with tiny hands and inarticulate cries, was opening for her the Door of Escape into the Open Country that lies for each one of us outside the Prison that is Self, would have been the most beautiful in her life, if Humanity had blessed her for the sufferings she was enduring on its behalf, if Society had supported and pitied her when she had fallen into the trap that it had laid. As things were, she was an outlaw, who would be stoned alike by men and women when it was discovered that an innocent indiscretion, prompted by a noble natural impulse, had flung her into the miry pit. She turned and looked across the flats at her back to the great camp of men, crouching for their prey. The Downs behind seemed to circle it as with a wall of dulled steel, making escape impossible; while over in the West was a murky glow as of damped-down furnaces, waiting to open their doors and pour down molten gloom on the City of the Plain. Ruth rose up swiftly and returned to the Hotel. Better even its unsympathetic walls than the naked desolation of the waste. There, however, was no one to whom she could turn. Ernie was out of the question, while Madame had retired, as always at this season of the year, to the sister-hotel at Brussels. Indeed in all Beachbourne with its hundred thousand inhabitants, its temples and tabernacles at every street corner, its innumerable white-collared priests and ministers, its sacrament-taking women, and reform-talking men, was there one soul to whom she could look in her distress? Ruth prayed as she had never prayed before. Alone in the darkness on her knees, redeeming herself and mankind by her tears, she asked that the punishment for the mother's sin might not fall upon the child. "On my head, O Lord, not hers," was the cry of her anguished heart. Light came to her darkness. There was one man in Beachbourne in whom she had detected, so she believed, the spirit of Love. That man was Mr. Trupp, who had attended her Miss Caryll till she died. Taking her courage in her hands one dark January evening, when she realized that her time at the Hotel was short, she stood on the steps of the Manor-house and rang. "Why, you're quite a stranger, Ruth!" said the smiling maid. "Could I see Mr. Trupp?" asked the girl. "That I'm sure you can." She was shown into the long consulting-room, and sat down, trembling, her eyes upon her knees. She was staking her all upon a throw. Mr. Trupp came in. The young woman dressed in black, simply as a lady, rose. "Who is it?" asked the surgeon, peering over his pince-nez. "Ruth Boam, sir," the other answered. "Miss Caryll." Mr. Trupp glanced at her. Then he put his hand upon her shoulder, and she knew that she was safe. "Sit down," he said gently. This large young creature, who had something of his own Bess about her, went straight to his heart in her trouble.