Holding it, he drew her against his side, and they stood in silence
looking upon the Seine, now dark beneath the clouding night.

"I can't feel sure of you," fell at length from Hilliard.

"I promise----"

"Yes; here, now, in Paris. But when you are back in that hell----"

"What difference can it make in me? It can't change what I feel now.
You have altered all my life, my thoughts about everything. When I
look back, I don't know myself. You were right; I must have been
suffering from an illness that affected my mind. It seems impossible
that I could ever have done such things. I ought to tell you. Do you
wish me to tell you everything?"

Hilliard spoke no answer, but he pressed her hand more tightly in
his own.

"You knew it from Patty, didn't you?"

"She told me as much as she knew that night when I waited for you in
High Street. She said you were in danger, and I compelled her to
tell all she could."

"I _was_ in danger, though I can't understand now how it went so far
as that. It was he who came to me with the money, from the gentleman
at Hampstead. That was how I first met him. The next day he waited
for me when I came away from business."