"Yes, Mary told me. Mary has been rather a trump about it."
"I shall be able to talk to Mary," thought Francis, with a sigh of relief.
Serge spent the night packing and dismantling his studio. He destroyed a great many of his pictures, called up the porter and made him a present of his furniture and the clothes that were left after he had packed two bags.
In the morning he went to fetch Annie Lipsett. He found her just leaving, but made her go back with him to see the boy. Him he hugged and kissed, and then he gave Annie a cheque for fifty pounds for his education.
"And for God's sake," he said, "don't make him a gentleman. Put him to a trade. If he's any real good he'll get out of it. If he's only middling good he'll stay there and marry and die respectable. If he's bad--God help you; but he won't be that."
She was very plucky and fought back her tears. Serge took her shoulders in his hands and said:
"You and I have had a queer sort of love, an impersonal sort of meeting in Heaven here on earth. I never understood before what it must feel like to be a seraph--just a head and wings. We've been so busy fighting our way up out of a slimy pit that we haven't had time to think much about each other--only the boy."
Annie's tears flowed freely and she clung to his hand and said:
"You don't know what you've been to me, but I can tell you now. It was so much to have you for my friend in that time when I had no one. I loved you. . . ."
"But all that sort of love went away afterwards when I had the boy. It has been a great thing for him too. . . ."
"That's so wonderful about you. You seem to be always learning. And now you're going. I used to dread your going, but now it doesn't hurt me at all. . . . You will always have me to think gladly of you."
"And I of you. . . . We've made the world richer by a friendship."
"I want to say thank you," she said, "but I can't, not enough."
In a few hours Serge was in the express for London. He had a portfolio of pictures and drawings, two bags, and one hundred and twenty pounds in notes. As the train passed out of the dingy murk and his eyes lighted on the green, undefiled country, he drew in great breaths and found it hard not to shout for joy in the new zest for adventure that had come to him.