Changing himself for a hot-tempered fool, and a mean-spirited one to boot, Arthur walked round and round the adjacent streets for several hours. For a while, indignation at Carrie’s behaviour struggled for place against anger at his own lack of gentleness and patience.

Oh, was it not cruel of her to act so towards him? Surely, surely it was only some momentary whim that had taken possession of her. He could not think she would deliberately plan to deceive him.

But then came the hot blast of jealousy to keep up the fire of indignation. She had gone out on Saturday night, and, above all places, to a music-hall, the resort of the most abandoned of both sexes, a place in which no woman who valued her reputation would care to be seen. Was it she who had proposed to go, or was it her companion, the landlady’s daughter, who had persuaded her? In either case she was culpable.

But this mood soon spent itself, giving way to one of apprehension and self-reproach. He had allowed her to leave him in anger, and who could tell what step she might take? The suddenness with which she had departed disclosed a hasty, impulsive temper, such a one as might lead to all manner of unconsidered follies.

Perhaps she would forthwith leave her lodgings and go where he had no means of discovering her. Clearly he must follow her to the house and see her there. Impossible to wait till tomorrow on the chance of her meeting him as usual. The anguish would be too unendurable.

He had turned in that direction, and was just entering Huntley Street, when, as he hurried on with his eyes on the pavement, he was stopped by a sudden hand upon his shoulder.

Looking up, he saw the short, stout figure of Mark Challenger before him.

“Where on earth have you been, Arthur?” he asked. “Why, I have been hunting for you all the morning. Are you ill, boy? Whatever is the matter with you?”

This sudden encounter seemed to recall Arthur to a sense of his physical suffering. He was wet to the skin, and exhausted with hunger. His eyes wandered over Mark’s face as if he had not yet clearly recognised him.

The latter quickly seized his arm, and, in spite of a feeble resistance, forced him to walk quickly home. In their room Arthur found a bright fire burning, and the table spread with the simple breakfast they were in the habit of taking together on Sundays. Mark compelled him to change his clothes, after which the warmth of the fire, combined with the internal action of a strong cup of coffee, soon restored him to physical strength.

As soon as he felt once more master of his faculties he rose and was going out again, with some muttered excuse, when Mark once more caught him by the arm and detained him.

“Now look here, Arthur,” he said, “for the present you don’t budge. Dash my buttons! What’s the good of my being something approaching three times your age, if I’m not to exert a little friendly authority now and then? There’s something amiss, I can see. Now can’t you just tell me what it is, and ease your mind?”

Arthur felt it would indeed ease him, but he hesitated.

“Have you and Carrie been quarrelling?” pursued Mark. “That must be it. Now, tell me what’s the matter, there’s a good lad.”

Thus pressed, Arthur did at length confess that there had been a little disagreement. To confess the whole, even to Mark, he felt to be impossible. Though the object of his love might be lowered in his own eyes, he could not bear that others should see her faults. But he said enough to make Mark partly suspect the truth, and the latter shook his head and looked grave.

Then, by dint of questioning, he got Arthur to reveal the greater part of the circumstances, proceeding after that to reason with him, and to try to show how great a need of caution and deliberation there was in a matter which probably concerned the happiness of two lives.

But Arthur was an impatient listener, and scarcely replied to his friend’s words. It was impossible for him to rest whilst he was yet uncertain about Carrie’s movements. Very shortly he found an opportunity of leaving the room, this time unopposed by his friend, and hurrying into the street, he took the direction of Carrie’s abode. Arrived opposite to it, he was rejoiced to see her face at the window. He motioned with his hand, and the face disappeared. A few minutes afterwards she herself appeared at the door, and walked across the street to join him.

It had now ceased raining, though the day continued as dark as ever. As Carrie drew near him, Arthur saw that her eyes were red, as if from crying, and immediately his heart went out to her in a gush of forgiving tenderness.

He took her hand as though they had not already met that morning, and together they walked on in silence.

“Will you forgive me for my angry words this morning?” asked Arthur, first breaking the silence in a timid voice, and without venturing to look into his companion’s face. “I did not know what I was saying.”

“Will you forgive me for doing what you didn’t wish me to?” was Carrie’s low-voiced reply. “I am very sorry. I will not do it again.”

They were near their favourite place of meeting in Torrington Square. At the moment only one or two people were in sight at the farthest end of the square, and the distant roll of vehicles was the only sound which broke the stillness of the dull January afternoon.

“Carrie!” whispered Arthur, grasping her hand as he walked on, and feeling that it trembled.

She looked into his face with a sweet smile and a questioning expression. He went on in low and eager tones —

“Will you give me the right to guard and protect you, not only from a distance, as a friend, but by your side, for the rest of your life? Will you be my wife?”

“Do you care so much for me?” asked Carrie, the sweet smile mingling with a light blush, so that she looked yet more beautiful.

“I have loved you ever since I knew you, dearest,” he returned. “Can you care for me a little?”

“I can love you with all the love I have,” she replied. “Is that enough?”

The word “love,” uttered for the first time by her lips, smote upon the finest chords of Arthur’s being, and left them throbbing with an intensity that almost deprived him of consciousness. He could only once more press her hand, when several people appeared turning the corner of the square, and coming towards them.

What had these innocent strangers done that Arthur should curse them in his heart with the bitterest of curses?

All the afternoon, all the dull, sad, dripping afternoon, till the lamplighter began to hurry on his blessed mission along the sloppy streets, did the two wander side by side, absolutely ignorant of the places they passed; listening to nothing but the sweet utterances of each other’s lips, seeing nothing but the glad looks upon each other’s faces. The day of unutterable gloom and misery had set in such an outbreak of glorious light as neither had ever known. What was it to them that the rain had recommenced with the coming night, that a chill, bitter wind had begun to rock the leafless boughs in the middle of the square? Other pedestrians hurried by with nipped faces and wet clothes, eager to reach the warmth and comfort of home; but for these two there was no home possessing anything like the attraction of these hideous streets. When it rained they opened their umbrellas; but, finding them inconvenient, Carrie soon closed hers and made Arthur’s suffice for both, availing herself of the chance to slip her little gloved hand delicately through Arthur’s arm, where it was immediately pressed warm and tight against his throbbing heart.

Consideration for his companion was the only feeling capable of arousing Arthur from his delicious trance. At length he insisted upon her going home, and she, after much resistance, consented.

They were close to Huntley Street and to Carrie’s abode when they passed the pitch-dark entrance to some mews.

“We had better say good-bye here,” said Arthur. “Then you must run on home quickly.”

He drew her gently beneath the archway, pressed her closely to his heart and kissed her.

“Will you always love me so, Arthur?” whispered Carrie, sighing with fulness of joy.

“Always, darling,” he replied, fervently; “as long as I have breath.”

They then parted, Carrie running quickly home, Arthur turning to walk by a roundabout way. He did not feel ready to face his friend Mark at once. It was nearly eight o’clock when he at length entered, and he was glad to find Mark absent. In his excitement he had forgotten that the latter would be at the club as usual.

That night Arthur said not a word of his happiness. On the following day he found time, however, to visit the Registrar’s Office and to give notice of an intended marriage between himself and Carrie. Neither of them had parent or guardian, so the fact that they were both under age was of no consequence. At the end of three weeks the marriage could be performed.

Wholly wrapped up as he was in one subject, Arthur would have been in danger of entirely forgetting the aims and aspirations which had so lately been the sole guides of his life, had it not been for the friendship of William Noble. Greatly as Arthur could not but admire the latter, he had grown of late almost to dread the frequent meetings with him and the long, earnest conversations into which Noble never failed to draw him. The secret of this uneasiness lay in the feeling that Noble’s daily life contained a reproach, a protest against the habit of mind into which his friend had fallen of late, though Noble’s own words and manner implied nothing less than a reproachful feeling. William’s life was one of steady, patient, unremitting toil; toil, moreover, thoroughly fruitful for himself and those with whom he came into connection. The son of parents who had earned their daily bread by the coarsest manual labour, and who had been unable to give him any education beyond mere reading and writing, he had so wrought his way upwards by virtue of persistent labour, vitalised by a source of innate ability, that now, at the age of twenty-four, he found himself possessed of knowledge quite wonderful for a man in his position of life, and, what is better still, of an unflagging energy ever ready to operate in obedience to the dictates of a sound, healthy judgment, and a most tender, sympathetic, charitable heart. In the presence of this man Arthur felt his genius rebuked.

On the Saturday preceding his last week of surprise, Noble proposed that they should spend the following afternoon in a visit to the house of the young lady whom he had spoken of as “Lucy.”

“But shall I be a, welcome visitor?” asked Arthur, who could not help regretting a walk with Carrie. “A perfect stranger, you see ——”

“Oh, you don’t know them,” interposed Noble, with a smile. “Mr. Venning, that’s Lucy’s father”, is always glad to see me and any friend of mine. I have often spoken to him of you, and he is anxious to see you.

“But shall I not be in your way?”

“If you were likely to be, Golding, I shouldn’t ask you,” replied Noble, calmly. “As I have told you, Lucy regards me — as yet — with nothing but friendship, and I always go there as a mere friend. Do you care to come?”

“Oh, yes, I shall be very glad indeed to come,” replied Arthur, ashamed of his hesitation as soon as he saw that a refusal would really pain his friend.

So the same evening he was obliged to inform Carrie that he should only be able to spend the Sunday morning with her, and not the whole day, the reason being that he was obliged to visit a friend.

“A friend! What friend?” asked Carrie, sharply.

Arthur, to avoid further questioning, explained the circumstances in detail.

“And you would rather go to see strange people that you know nothing about than spend the time with me?” said Carrie, in a tone of annoyance.

“You know I would not rather do so, Carrie,” replied Arthur. “I have explained the case to you. You must see that it is impossible for me to refuse.”

“I don’t see that it is. You could say that you were engaged. I can’t do without you all day tomorrow. You must write and say you find you have another engagement.”

“It is impossible to do so, Carrie,” urged Arthur, in his quietest tone. “It would be unkind, it would be rude to do so.”

“I’m sure I think it’s much ruder to leave me,” retorted the girl, separating herself some feet from his side as they walked along together. “You are getting not to care about me at all. That’s the second thing you’ve refused me in one day. I asked you to take me to the theatre to-night, and you refused, and now you refuse to see me for a whole day.”

“You shouldn’t speak so, dearest,” urged Arthur, drawing close to her again. “I don’t refuse to see you for a whole day. I shall be with you all the morning, if it’s fine; and then, if you like, I will see you when I come back at night. And as to the theatre, you know why I don’t wish to take you. I can’t afford to pay for a good place, and I don’t choose that you should crowd in with a lot of vulgar people; it isn’t nice.”

It was not the first time that Arthur had adopted this tone in speaking to Carrie. In his attempt to exalt her nature above the level on which it had hitherto moved, he, the democratic agitator, the ardent sympathiser with the most miserable of poverty’s victims, waxed quite aristocratic in his conversation. In his heart he would rather have seen Carrie fall into the most complete snobbishness on the subject of riches and rank than continue at rest among the sympathies with vulgar life with which she had grown up. At present his passion was too earnest to permit of his playing the pedant, but already he looked forward to their marriage as affording him an opportunity of educating Carrie and rendering her, from an intellectual point of view, more worthy of his devotion.

After the above conversation they parted with rather less of their usual fervour.

“When shall I see you tomorrow morning, Carrie?” asked Arthur.

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied the girl. “The usual time, I suppose.”

“Of course if it isn’t fine you mustn’t expect me.”

“Very well. You will have all the more time with, your friend.”

So saying, Carrie walked off, and Arthur returned home miserable to the heart’s core. Luckily it was fine on the following morning, and something like a reconciliation was patched up between them, but still Carrie could not part from her lover at noon without speaking with some bitterness of his “friends,” and Arthur was not sorry to look forward to Will Noble’s society as a relief from these petty troubles which yet gave him such exquisite pain.

As it was a clear, frosty afternoon the walk towards the East End was agreeable. Noble was in excellent spirits, probably because he was about to see Lucy, and talked in his most cheerful vein all the way. In reply to Arthur’s request for some information with regard to Mr. Venning, he told him that the latter was by trade a flute manufacturer, but not in very flourishing circumstances. His wife had been long dead and he had one child, Lucy, who was employed as a “fitter-on,” or in some such capacity, in the show-rooms of a large East End millinery establishment. Hereupon he diverged into a eulogy of Lucy, speaking with delicate appreciation of her beauty, her modesty, her cleverness. Arthur was rather amused to see his friend under this new aspect, but at the same time it gave him pain. How unlike was his own passion to this calm, deep, persevering affection.

On arriving at the shop they of course found it closed, and knocked for admission at a side door. Mr. Venning himself replied to the summons, and forthwith led them into a small parlour. He was a middle-aged man, short in stature and with his left foot distorted, so that he walked very lame. In face he was somewhat care-worn, but his features wore a singularly sweet and amiable expression. In his eyes was a rather absent look, indicating that he was addicted to reverie. When he spoke his voice was low and musical. He wore neither beard nor moustache, the absence of these increasing the female cast of his countenance. His dress, though very plain and showing signs of poverty, was fastidiously neat, and Arthur observed that his hands were of a wonderful delicacy.

“Mr. Golding,” said Noble, as they all took seats in the little parlour, “is an intimate friend of mine, and I felt sure you would thank me for bringing him to see you. He has the same interests at heart as ourselves, Mr. Venning.”

“I am always rejoiced to see any of William Noble’s friends,” returned Mr. Venning, looking at Arthur with his captivating smile, and speaking in a very quiet tone, which was still cordial. “And especially on Sunday afternoon when I have leisure to sit quietly at home. Next to the society of my good friends, Mr. Golding, I have no pleasure so great as that of sitting quite still and in perfect silence. Since two o’clock I have been holding a very pleasant conversation with the fire, its cracking seemed to make answers to my thoughts. How fond I am of the stillness of the ............