waxed against the
girl, a convicted felon, who thus had the audacity to beard him.

"What has all this to do with the question of theft in the store?"
he rumbled, huffily. "That was the excuse for your coming here. And,
instead of telling me something, you rant about gas-stoves and carfare."

The inexorable voice went on in its monotone, as if he had not spoken.

"And, when you are really sick, and have to stop work, what are you
going to do then? Do you know, Mr. Gilder, that the first time a
straight girl steals, it's often because she had to have a doctor--or
some luxury like that? And some of them do worse than steal. Yes, they
do--girls that started straight, and wanted to stay that way. But, of
course, some of them get so tired of the whole grind that--that----"

The man who was the employer of hundreds concerning whom these grim
truths were uttered, stirred uneasily in his chair, and there came a
touch of color into the healthy brown of his cheeks as he spoke his
protest.

"I'm not their guardian. I can't watch over them after they leave the
store. They are paid the current rate of wages--as much as any other
store pays." As he spoke, the anger provoked by this unexpected
assault on him out of the mouth of a convict flamed high in virtuous
repudiation. "Why," he went on vehemently, "no man living does more
for his employees than I do. Who gave the girls their fine rest-rooms
upstairs? I did! Who gave them the cheap lunch-rooms? I did!"

"But you won't pay them enough to live on!" The very fact that the words
were spoken without any trace of rancor merely made this statement of
indisputable truth obnoxious to the man, who was stung to more savage
resentment in asserting his impugned self-righteousness.

"I pay them the same as the other stores do," he repeated, sullenly.

Yet once again, the gently cadenced voice gave answer, an answer
informed with that repulsive insistence to the man who sought to resist
her indictment of him.

"But you won't pay them enough to live on." The simple lucidity of the
charge forbade direct reply.

Gilder betook himself to evasion by harking back to the established
ground of complaint.

"And, so, you claim that you were forced to steal. That's the plea you
make for yourself and your friends."

"I wasn't forced to steal," came the answer, spoken in the monotone that
had marked her utterance throughout most of the interview. "I wasn't
forced to steal, and I didn't steal.