Yvonne was beginning to be a vital interest in his life. On the days that the hospital was not open to him, he sent her little notes of his doings and of such things as might amuse her. In her helpless dependence she grew to be what Noakes had been to him in his latter days--with the sweet and subtle difference made by her sex. He had moods almost of happiness. Yet, like Noakes, Yvonne had not the power of freeing him from himself, from the awful memories, from the taint that clung to him. His crime and its punishment was his hair-shirt, for ever next the sensitive skin, never for the shortest intervals forgotten. Small incidents were never wanting to bring back the old burning anguish. Already in the streets he had passed, unrecognised, two old prison-associates. The sight of them was hateful. Once, in the Strand, he came face to face with a man, his chief intimate in that fashionable demi-reputable world which had drawn him to his precipice. The man cut him dead. On another occasion he met a troop of his cousins from Holland Park on the terrace of the British Museum. He noticed a girl recognize him and turn round another way, with a start, as he sprang hurriedly by through the folding doors. After such encounters, he cowered under the sense of everlasting disgrace. The old longing that always had lain dormant within him revived with intense poignancy; the longing to redeem his self-respect by some wild heroic deed of atonement. Sometimes he thought of realising all his capital, including the publisher’s eighty pounds and giving it to Yvonne. But soon she would be beyond the need of his help and his sacrifice would be merely silly. Common-sense leads us generally to the most hopeless commonplace. Nor did patient bearing of his lot appeal to his sensitive fancy as an expiation. The self-respect that would enable him to free the world’s back with cheerful calm could only be purchased by some great self-sacrifice. But what chances for such were offered in his humdrum, poverty-stricken life?