“But when shall we see you again?”

“Oh, at Dover, of course.”

“Will it be rough, do you think?  I do wish Eve would talk.  I can’t get a word out of her.  It makes it all so miserable, when we might be enjoying ourselves.”

“Don’t trouble:  leave her to herself.  I’ll get you some papers.”

On returning from the bookstall, he slipped loose silver into Patty’s hands.

“Use that if you want anything on the journey.  And—­I haven’t forgot my promise.”

“Nonsense!”

“Go and take your places now:  there’s only ten minutes to wait.”

He watched them as they passed the harrier.  Neither of the girls was dressed very suitably for travelling; but Eve’s costume resembled that of a lady, while Patty’s might suggest that she was a lady’s-maid.  As if to confirm this distinction, Patty had burdened herself with several small articles, whereas her friend carried only a sunshade.  They disappeared among people upon the platform.  In a few minutes Hilliard followed, glanced along the carriages till he saw where the girls were seated, and took his own place.  He wore a suit which had been new on his first arrival in London, good enough in quality and cut to give his features the full value of their intelligence; a brown felt hat, a russet necktie, a white flannel shirt.  Finding himself with a talkative neighbour in the carriage, he chatted freely.  As soon as the train had started, he lit his pipe and tasted the tobacco with more relish than for a long time.

On board the steamer Eve kept below from first to last.  Patty walked the deck with Hilliard, and vastly to her astonishment, achieved the voyage without serious discomfort.  Hilliard himself, with the sea wind in his nostrils, recovered that temper of buoyant satisfaction which had accompanied his first escape from London.  He despised the weak misgivings and sordid calculations of yesterday.  Here he was, on a Channel steamer, bearing away from disgrace and wretchedness the woman whom his heart desired.  Wild as the project had seemed to him when first he conceived it, he had put it into execution.  The moment was worth living for.  Whatever the future might keep in store for him of dreary, toilsome, colourless existence, the retrospect would always show him this patch of purple—­a memory precious beyond all the possible results of prudence and narrow self-regard.

The little she-Cockney by his side entertained him with the flow of her chatter; it had the advantage of making him feel a travelled man.

“I didn’t cross this way when I came before,” he explained to her.  “From Newhaven it’s a much longer voyage.”

“You like the sea, then?”

“I chose it because it was cheaper—­that’s all.”

“Yet you’re so extravagant now,” remarked Patty, with eyes that confessed admiration of this quality.

“Oh, because I am rich,” he answered gaily.  “Money is nothing to me.”