“And I dare say we can find a way to settle the furniture question,” said Joyce. “I shall begin to look about for a cheap place at once.” So the trouble fell from Yvonne for a time. Now that she had decided to make no further appeal to Everard, but to endeavour once more to earn her livelihood, she felt lighter-hearted. Her attachment to Stephen had grown so strong that she had contemplated the loss of his daily protection with dismay. The solitary life frightened her. The vicissitudes through which she had passed, the loss of her voice especially, had taken away her nerve. At first, she had been so weak from her long illness and her helpless arm, that she found Stephen’s presence an unspeakable comfort, and did not speculate upon any anomaly in her position. By the time she regained health, their life under the same roof appeared in the natural order of every-day things. And it was very pleasant. Besides, with the daily intercourse, came a deeper comprehension of his shipwreck. She began to realise that the material dependence on her side was reciprocated by a spiritual dependence on his. It awoke new and delicious stirrings of pride to feel her influence over him, to find herself of use to a man. Once she could sing, amuse--yield her lips with kind passivity to satisfy strange unknown needs. She had regarded herself with wistful seriousness in her relations with men, as a poor little instrument for men to play on. They fingered the stops, extracted what music they could, and then laid the pipe aside while they devoted themselves to the business of the world. But Stephen approached her differently from other men. He did not want her for her voice; he did not throw himself weary into a chair and say, “Chatter and amuse me;” and he did not look at her with eyes yearning for her lips. But his needs, quite other than she had known before, were revealing themselves to her with gradual distinctness. She was learning his humbled pride, his lacerated self-respect, his ingrained sense of degradation, his crying need of sympathy and encouragement and ennobling object in life. The strong man came to her, Yvonne, to be healed and strengthened; and, from some fresh-discovered fountain within her, she was finding remedy for maladies and sustaining draughts for weakness. A new conception of herself was dawning before her, in a great, quiet happiness; and her nature unconsciously expanded. Thus a twofold instinct urged her to throw in her lot with Joyce. He passed a very anxious week. It seemed as if his old bitter and fruitless search for work was to be repeated. Neither could he find suitable apartments. “I’m afraid it will have to come to the workhouse,” he said in dejected jest. “Oh, that will never do!” cried Yvonne. “They would separate us.”