He had not dreamed that in leaving him she had gone from him to her room, and taken out his picture--the same that she had with her now in Bolton Street--and had kissed it, bidding him farewell there with a passion which she could not display in his presence.

And she had thought of his offer about the money over and over again.

"Yes," she would say, "that man loved me.

He would have given me all he had to relieve me, though nothing was to come to him in return." She had, at any rate been loved once; and she almost wished that she had taken the money, that she might now have an opportunity of repaying it.
And she was again free, and her old lover was again by her side.

Had that fatal episode in her life been so fatal that she must now regard herself as tainted and unfit for him?
There was no longer anything to separate them--anything of which she was aware, unless it was that.