The woman looked away to where the child sat, in a corner of the small room, playing with some disused cotton reels.

“You are very kind, sir,” she said in a low, uneasy voice; “but I want nothing, we want very little, the child and I; and with what your kindness in getting me the machine helps us to, we have enough.”

“You don’t want to be reinstated, to get back your lover, to have your child acknowledged?”

The girl flushed; her hands, which were still locked together, trembled a little.

“I don’t want for nothing, sir, except to be left alone.”

Then she added, looking him straight in the face now, with a certain rude dignity: 

“I wouldn’t seem ungrateful, sir, for your great kindness.  I think you are the best man I ever met.  Oh, believe me, I am not ungrateful, sir!  But it is no good, not a scrap, though once I thought it.  We must get along as we can now, the child and I—­shame and all.”

She sighed, gazed intently for a silent minute at the keys of the elaborate machine before her, and then continued, speaking very slowly, as if she were afraid of drawing too largely on her newly-found candour.

“Why should I keep it from you?  It makes me feel a liar every time I see you.  I will be quite plain with you, sir; perhaps the truth’s best, though it’s hard enough.  I’ve seen him; that’s why I couldn’t tell you any more.  And it’s all over and done, and God help us!  We must make the best of it.  You see, sir, he is married,” said the girl, with a sharp intonation in her voice like a sob.

Rainham had sunk into a chair wearily; he looked up at her now, drawing a long breath, which, for some reason he could not analyse, was replete with relief.

“Married?” he ejaculated; “are you sure?”

“Sure enough,” said Kitty Crichton.  “He told me so.”

“Do you care for this fellow?” he asked curiously after a while.

The flush on her face had faded into two hectic spots on either cheek; there was a lack of all animation in her voice, whether of hope or indignation; she had the air of a person who gave up, who was terribly tired of things.

“Care?” she echoed.  “I don’t rightly know, sir; I think it’s all dead together—­love and anger, and my good looks and all.  I care for the child, and I don’t want to harry or hunt him down for the sake of what has been,—­that’s all.”

He regarded her with the same disinterested pity which had seized him when he saw her first.  There were only ruins of a beauty that must have once been striking.  As he watched her a doubt assailed him, whether, after all, he had not been deceived by a bare resemblance; whether, in effect, she had ever been actually identical with that brilliant Pierrette whose likeness had so amazed him in Lightmark’s rooms.

“By the way,” he asked suddenly, “you told me you have been a model:  did—­was this man a painter?  Has he ever painted you?”