ere turned
away and her confusion not altogether to be concealed.

"I'm afraid you take your ideas of us from the cheap story-books," she
said in a low voice; "women, nowadays, have their own ambitions and
think less of men's. My dearest friend is a soldier, but I'm sure he
would be a very foolish one if war broke out. They say he worked
terribly hard in South Africa, but I don't think he ever killed any one.
So you see--I shouldn't ask you to go into the army, and I'm sure my
father would not wish it either."

"It would do no good if he did," said Alban as bluntly. "I should only
make a fool of myself. Your friend must have told you that you want a
pretty good allowance to do upon--and fancy begging from your people
when you were twenty-one. Why, in the East End many a lad of nineteen
keeps a whole family and doesn't think himself ill-used. Isn't it rot
that there should be so much inequality in life, Miss Gessner? I don't
suppose, though, that one would think so if one had money."

She smiled at his question, but diverted the subject cleverly.

"Are you very self-willed, Mr. Kennedy?"

"Do you mean that I get what I want--or try to?"

"I mean that you have your own way in everything. If you were in love
you would carry the poor thing off by force."

"If I were in love and guessed that she was, I should certainly be
outside to time. That's East End, you know, for punctuality."

"You would marry in haste and repent at leisure?"

"It would be yes or no, and that would be the end of it. Girls like a
man who compels them--they like to obey, at least when they are young. I
don't believe any girl ever loved a coward yet. Do you think so
yourself?"

She astonished him by rising suddenly and breaking off the conversation
as abruptly.

"God help me, I don't know what I think," she said; and then, with half
a laugh to cover it, "Here is Mr. Geary come to take care of you. I will
say good-night. We shall meet at breakfast and talk of all this
again--if you get up in time."

He made no answer and she disappeared with just a flash of her ample
skirts into the boudoir and so to the hall beyond. The curate appeared a
minute later, full of apologies and of the Dorcas meeting he had so
lately illuminated with his intellectual presence. A mild cigarette and
a glass of mineral water found him quite ready for bed.

"There will be so much to speak of to-morrow, my dear boy," he said in
that lofty tone which attended his pat