"Who could help it? I pity them from the bottom of my heart. Fancy their degradation. Fancy having been brought up in the enjoyment of every luxury, started with every advantage in life, and then to come out here to consort with all the riff-raff of the world and to die, cut off from kith and kin, in some hovel over yonder. It is too awful."
Ellison sighed. She looked at him, and then said very softly:
"Mr. Ellison, I do not want to pry into your secret, but is there no hope for you?"
He appeared not to have heard her. A great temptation was upon him. He was going away to-morrow: she would never see him again. She had evidently a romantic interest in these shattered lives--could he not allow himself the enjoyment of that sympathy just for a few brief hours? Why not? Ah, yes, why not?
"Miss McCartney," he said, after a long pause, "do you know, while you were away to-night, and I was sitting waiting for you, I subjected myself to a severe cross-examination?"
"What sort of cross-examination do you mean, Mr. Ellison?"
"Well, that is rather a difficult question to answer, and for the following reason: In the first place, to tell you would necessitate my doing a thing I had made up my mind never to do again."
"To unlock the coffers of my memory and to take out the history of my past. Eight years ago I swore that I would forget certain things--the first was my real name, the second was the life I had once led, and the third was the reason that induced me to give up both."
"I have tried to remember that you have only known me a month, that you really know nothing of myself, my disposition, or my history."
"I fear that is impossible. But, Miss McCartney, since I see your sympathy for others, I have a good mind to tell you everything, and let you judge for yourself. You are a woman whose word I would take against all the world. You will swear that whatever I reveal to you shall never pass your lips."
She was trembling in real earnest now. To prolong their interview he put the boat over on another tack, one that would bring her close under the headland by the station. Esther raised no objection, but sat looking before her with parted lips and rather startled eyes. She noticed that his voice, when he spoke, took another tone. She attributed it to nervousness, when in reality it was only unconscious acting.