"Fred, I can't help myself--can't you see that? Don't make it harder for me by talking like that."
"I hope you'll be happy, Esther, but I don't think we shall see much more of each other. You know that I do not frequent public-houses."
"Yes, I know; but you might come and see me in the morning when we're doing no business."
They shook hands, and he went out hurriedly. She dashed a tear from her eyes, and went upstairs to her mistress, who had rung for her.
Miss Rice was in her easy-chair, reading. A long, slanting ray entered the room; the bead curtain glittered, and so peaceful was the impression that Esther could not but perceive the contrast between her own troublous life and the contented privacy of this slender little spinster's.
"Well, miss," she said, "it's all over. I've told him."
"Have you, Esther?" said Miss Rice. Her white, delicate hands fell over the closed volume. She wore two little colourless rings and a ruby ring which caught the light.
"Yes, miss, I've told him all. He seemed a good deal cut up. I couldn't help crying myself, for I could have made him a good wife--I'm sure I could; but it wasn't to be."
"You've told him you were going off to live with William?"
"Yes, miss; there's nothing like telling the whole truth while you're about it. I told him I was going off to-night."
"Yes, miss; he spoke to me about religion, but I told him I didn't want Jackie to be a fatherless boy, and to lose any money he might have a right to. It don't look right to go and live with a married man; but you knows, miss, how I'm situated, and you knows that I'm only doing it because it seems for the best."
"Nothing much, miss, except that I might get left a second time--and, he wasn't slow to add, with another child."
"Have you thought of that danger, Esther?"
"Yes, miss, I've thought of everything; but thinking don't change nothing. Things remain just the same, and you've to chance it in the end--leastways a woman has. Not on the likes of you, miss, but the likes of us."
"Yes," said Miss Rice reflectively, "it is always the woman who is sacrificed." And her thought went back for a moment to the novel she was writing. It seemed to her pale and conventional compared with this rough page torn out of life. She wondered if she could treat the subject. She passed in review the names of some writers who could do justice to it, and then her eyes went from her bookcase to Esther.