“That was me,” said Eden naïvely.
“You?”
“Yes; poor me. They let me down by a sheet which they tied round my waist.”
“What, from that high window? I hope they tied you tight.”
“Only one knot; I ever so nearly slipped out of it last night, and that’s what frightened me so, Walter.”
“How horribly dangerous,” said Walter indignantly.
“I know it is horribly dangerous,” said Eden, standing up, and gesticulating violently, in one of those bursts of passion which flashed out of him now and then, and were the chief amusement of his persecutors; “and I dream about it all night,” he said, bursting into tears, “and I know, I know that some day I shall slip, or the knot will come undone, and I shall fall and be smashed to atoms. But what do they care for that? and I sometimes wish I were dead myself, to have it all over.”
“Hush, Arty, don’t talk like that,” said Walter, as he felt the little soiled hand trembling with passion and emotion in his own. “But what on earth do they let you down for?”
“To go to—but you won’t tell?” he said, looking round again. “Oh, I forgot, you didn’t like my saying that. But it’s they who have made me a coward, Walter; indeed it is.”
“And no wonder,” thought Walter to himself. “But you needn’t be afraid any more,” he said aloud; “I promise you that no one shall do anything to you which they’d be afraid to do to me.”