"I shall think of it often after tonight, and imagine it with all
its freshness gone, and marks of suffering and degradation upon it."

"Suffering, perhaps; degradation, no. Why should I be degraded?"

"You can't help yourself. The life you have chosen brings its
inevitable consequences."

"Chosen!" she repeated, with an indignant face. "How do you know I
had any choice in the matter? You have no right to speak
contemptuously, like that."

"Perhaps not. Certainly not. I should have said--the life you are
evidently leading."

"Well, I don't know that it makes so much difference. I suppose
everybody has a choice at all events between life and death, and you
mean that I ought to have killed myself rather than come to this.
That's my own business, however, and--"

A man had just passed behind them, and, catching the sound of the
girl's voice, had turned suddenly to look at her. She, at the same
moment, looked towards him, and stopped all at once in her speech.

"Are you walking up Regent Street?" she asked Waymark, in quite a
different voice. "Give me your arm, will you?"

Waymark complied, and they walked together in the direction she
suggested.