in began to speak, and straightened herself with a quick air of
attention.

"Sometimes I thought he loved me too, but he was not the sort of man who
would choose to marry an heiress. My money stood between us. So I ...
I tried to make it easier by showing him ... how I felt. When we went
back to London he said good-bye, and refused my invitations, but I met
him by accident, and," she straightened herself with a gesture of pride,
"I am not ashamed of what I did. It would have been folly to sacrifice
happiness for the sake of a convention ... I _asked_ him--"

"And?"

"_He cared_!" Honor said softly. "I had my hour, Pixie, but it was
_only_ an hour, for at the end we got to business, and that wrecked it
all. I've told you about my factory. Over here in England, when people
have looked at me through monocles, there _have_ been times when I've
been ashamed of pickles, but at home I'm proud! Father started as a
working lad, and built up that great business, brick by brick. Three
thousand `hands' are employed in the factory, but they were never
`hands' to him, Patricia, they were _souls_! He'd been a working man
himself, and there was not one thing in their lives he didn't know and
understand. One of the first things I can remember, right away back in
my childhood, is being taken to a window to see those men stream past,
and being told they were my friends and that I was to take care of them.
He had no airs, my pappa; he never gave himself frills, or pretended to
be anything different from what he was--there was only one thing he was
proud of, and that was that his men were the happiest and most contented
in the States. When he died he left me more than his money, he left me
his _men_!"

Honor paused, her eyes bright with suppressed feeling, and Pixie, keen
as ever to appreciate an emotional situation, drew a fluttering breath.

"Yes, yes! How beautiful! How fine! All those lives ... Honor,
aren't you proud?"

"I've told you before, my dear. The best part of me is proud and glad,
but we're pretty complex creatures, and I guess a big duty is bound to
come up against a pleasure now and then. At the moment I was speaking
of, it was one man against three thousand, and the one man weighed down
the scale."

"But ... but I don't understand." Pixie puckered her brows in
bewilderment. "Why couldn't you have both?"

"I thought I could, Patricia. I calculated, as my work was
full-fledged, and his had har