and wiped her eyes.

"I think you are a very charming and tender-hearted young lady.
But I shall have to be very careful how I tell you sad things, if
this is the way you are going to receive my confidences," he said,
with a rather rueful air; for she was by no means the sort of girl
he would have expected to indulge in the weakness of tears.

Katherine laughed. She was desperately ashamed of having been so
foolish; but those words of gratitude, spoken by Mr. Selincourt
about the person who had wronged him were like balm to her sore
heart. It was as if her father had confessed his fault, and had
been forgiven on earth as well as in heaven.

"You must pay the penalty of your eloquence by seeing your audience
drowned in tears," she said lightly. Then, rolling up the
remainder of the furs, she left the stockroom and returned to the
store, whither Mr. Selincourt followed her; and as there were no
customers he sat on a box and talked on, as if it were a real
pleasure to have found a sympathetic listener.

"Those two years of struggle, of disappointment and bitter poverty,
have had their uses," he said, in a meditative fashion, as he sat
looking out through the door, which Katherine had unlocked again.
His gaze was on the river, which sparkled and gleamed in the
sunshine, but his thoughts were far away.

Katherine answered only by a splitting, rending noise, as she tore
a piece of calico. But that did not matter, because he was too
much absorbed in his own thoughts to need other speech just then.

"Perhaps if I had not been poor myself I should not have had
sympathy with other men who were in the slough and couldn't get
out," he said, speaking as much to himself as to Katherine.

"It is fine to be able to help other people," she replied, cutting
the next piece of calico to avoid making so much noise.

"Yes, but I think no one realizes the full blessing of it who has
not known in his own person what it is to be in trouble and to be
helped himself," he said, his tone still dreamy, and his gaze on
the hurrying water.

"Have you helped a great many?" she asked softly.

"A few," he answered. "Some have been disappointments, of course,
and once or twice I have been robbed for my pains; but I have had
my compensations, especially in Archie Raymond and Jervis Ferrars."

"Who is Archie Raymond?" demanded Katherine, who was measuring
calico as rapidly, and with as much dexterity, as if she had served
an apprenticeshi