Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. III, 1889.djvu/308

 Where’s the cursed ink?” And she takes the letter.

“Why, you’ve lost a day’s work, Jane! She gave you the money for the journey, I suppose?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“Tell her she’s not to make a fool of herself in future.”

“No, I shan’t say that, Mr. Byass. But I’m half-tempted to say it to some one else!”

It was the old, happy smile, come back for a moment; the voice that had often made peace so merrily. The return journey seemed short, and with glad heart-beating she hastened from the City to Hanover Street.

Well, well; of course it would all begin over again; Jane herself knew it. But is not all life a struggle onward from compromise to compromise, until the day of final pacification?

Through that winter she lived with a strange secret in her mind, a secret which was the source of singularly varied feelings,—of astonishment, of pain, of encouragement, of apprehension, of grief. To no one could she speak of it; no one could divine its existence—no one save the person to whom she owed this surprising novelty in her experience. She would have