"Never? This is the first time you have been at a restaurant?"

"For dinner--yes."

Hilliard heard the avowal with surprise and delight. After all,
there could not have been much intimacy between her and the man she
met at the Exhibition.

"When I go back to slavery," he continued, "I shall bear it more
philosophically. It was making me a brute, but I think there'll be
no more danger of that. The memory of civilisation will abide with
me. I shall remind myself that I was once a free man, and that will
support me."

Eve regarded him with curiosity.

"Is there no choice?" she asked. "While you have money, couldn't you
find some better way of earning a living?"

"I have given it a thought now and then, but it's very doubtful.
There's only one thing at which I might have done well, and that's
architecture. From studying it just for my own pleasure, I believe I
know more about architecture than most men who are not in the
profession; but it would take a long time before I could earn money
by it. I could prepare myself to be an architectural draughtsman, no
doubt, and might do as well that way as drawing machinery. But----"

"Then why don't you go to work! It would save you from living in
hideous places."