And I shall have the chance of eventually doing much better than I ever could at the old grind, where, in fact, I had no prospect whatever." "That's very good news," Eve remarked, gazing across the street.
"You think I ought to accept ?" "I suppose you can pay the fifty guineas, and still leave yourself enough to live upon ?" "Enough till I earn something," Hilliard answered with a smile.
"Then I should think there's no doubt." "The question is this--are you perfectly willing to go back to Birmingham ?" "I'm _anxious_ to go." "You feel quite restored to health ?" "I was never so well in my life." Hilliard looked into her face, and could easily believe that she spoke the truth.

His memory would no longer recall the photograph in Mrs.
Brewer's album; the living Eve, with her progressive changes of countenance, had obliterated that pale image of her bygone self.

He saw her now as a beautiful woman, mysterious to him still in many respects, yet familiar as though they had been friends for years.
"Then, whatever life is before me," he said.

"I shall have done _one_ thing that is worth doing." "Perhaps--if everyone's life is worth saving," Eve answered in a voice just audible.
"Everyone's is not; but yours was." Two men who had been sitting not far from them rose and walked away.

As if more at her ease for this secession, Eve looked at her companion, and said in a tone of intimacy: "How I must have puzzled you when you first saw me in London!" He answered softly: "To be sure you did.