146 The Light That Failed lady, mending socks. Mr. Torpenhow wears his socks out both ends at once.” “Three quid a week from me, and the delights of my society. No socks mended. Nothing from Jorp except a nod on the landing now and again, and all his socks mended. Bessie is very much a woman,” thought Dick; and he looked at her between half-shut eyes. Food and rest had transformed the girl, as Dick knew they would. “What are you looking at me like that for?” she said quickly. “Don’t. You look reg’lar bad when you look that way. You don’t think much o’ me, do you?” “That depends on how you behave.” Bessie behaved beautifully. Only it was difficult at the end of a sitting to bid her go out into the gray streets. She very much preferred the studio and a big chair by the stove, with some socks in her lap as an excuse for delay. Then Torpenhow would come in, and Bessie would be moved to tell strange and wonderful stories of her past, and still stranger ones of her present improved circumstances. She would make them tea as though she had a right to make it; and once or twice on these occasions Dick caught Torpenhow’s eyes fixed on the trim little figure, and because Bessie’s flittings about the room made Dick ardently long for Maisie, he realized whither Torpenhow’s thoughts were tending. And Bessie was exceedingly careful of the condition of Torpenhow’s linen. She spoke very little to him, but sometimes they talked together on the landing. “I was a great fool,” Dick said to himself. “I know what red firelight looks like when a man’s tramping through a strange town; and ours is a lonely, selfish sort of life at the best. I wonder Maisie doesn’t feel that sometimes. But I can’t order Bessie away. That’s the worst of beginning things. One never knows where they stop.” One evening, after a sitting prolonged to the last