ngible image of material
achievement. The consciousness of her different point of view merely kept
them at a little distance from her, as though she were a foreigner with
whom it was an effort to talk.

"Miss Bart, if you can't sew those spangles on more regular I guess you'd
better give the hat to Miss Kilroy."

Lily looked down ruefully at her handiwork. The forewoman was right: the
sewing on of the spangles was inexcusably bad. What made her so much more
clumsy than usual? Was it a growing distaste for her task, or actual
physical disability? She felt tired and confused: it was an effort to put
her thoughts together. She rose and handed the hat to Miss Kilroy, who
took it with a suppressed smile.

"I'm sorry; I'm afraid I am not well," she said to the forewoman.

Miss Haines offered no comment. From the first she had augured ill of
Mme. Regina's consenting to include a fashionable apprentice among her
workers. In that temple of art no raw beginners were wanted, and Miss
Haines would have been more than human had she not taken a certain
pleasure in seeing her forebodings confirmed.

"You'd better go back to binding edges," she said drily. Lily slipped out
last among the band of liberated work-women. She did not care to be
mingled in their noisy dispersal: once in the street, she always felt an
irresistible return to her old standpoint, an instinctive shrinking from
all that was unpolished and promiscuous. In the days--how distant they
now seemed!--when she had visited the Girls' Club with Gerty Farish, she
had felt an enlightened interest in the working-classes; but that was
because she looked down on them from above, from the happy altitude of
her grace and her beneficence. Now that she was on a level with them, the
point of view was less interesting.

She felt a touch on her arm, and met the penitent eye of Miss Kilroy.
"Miss Bart, I guess you can sew those spangles on as well as I can when
you're feeling right. Miss Haines didn't act fair to you."

Lily's colour rose at the unexpected advance: it was a long time since
real kindness had looked at her from any eyes but Gerty's.

"Oh, thank you: I'm not particularly well, but Miss Haines was right. I
AM clumsy."

"Well, it's mean work for anybody with a headache." Miss Kilroy paused
irresolutely. "You ought to go right home and lay down. Ever try
orangeine?"

"Thank you." Lily held out her hand. "It's very kind of you--I mean to go
home."

She looked gr