his grasp. "What
brought you down to this!" She snapped out the words at him; she had
not come to Whitechapel to be slighted at all events.

"I have risen," he answered quietly.

"Risen? And you sell baby-linen!"

Julian laughed in pure contentment. "You don't understand," he said.
For a moment he looked at her as one debating with himself and then:
"You have a right to understand. I will tell you." He leaned across
the counter, and as he spoke the eager passion of a devotee began to
kindle in his eyes and vibrate through the tones of his voice. "The
knowledge of a truth worked into your heart will lift you, eh, must
lift you high? But base your life upon that truth, centre yourself
about it, till your thoughts become instincts born from it! It must
lift you still higher then; ah, how much higher! Well, I have done
that. Yes, that's why I am here. And I owe it all to you."

Lady Tamworth repeated his words in sheer bewilderment. "You owe it
all to me?"

"Yes," he nodded, "all to you." And with genuine gratitude he added,
"You didn't know the good that you had done."

"Ah, don't say that!" she cried.

The bell tinkled over the shop-door and a woman entered. Lady Tamworth
bent forward and said hastily, "I must speak to you."

"Then you must buy something; what shall it be?" Fairholm had already
recovered his self-possession and was drawing out one of the shelves
in the wall behind him.

"No, no!" she exclaimed, "not here; I can't speak to you here. Come
and call on me; what day will you come?"

Julian shook his head. "Not at all, I am afraid. I have not the time."

A boy came out from the inner room and began to get ready the
shutters. "Ah, it's Friday," she said. "You will be closing soon."

"In five minutes."

"Then I will wait for you. Yes, I will wait for you."

She paused at the door and looked at Julian. He was deferentially
waiting on his customer, and Lady Tamworth noticed with a queer
feeling of repugnance that he had even acquired the shopman's trick of
rubbing the hands. Those five minutes proved for her a most unenviable
period. Julian's sentence,--"I owe it all to you"--pressed heavily
upon her conscience. Spoken bitterly, she would have given little heed
to it; but there had been a convincing sincerity in the ring of
his voice. The words, besides, brought back to her Sir John's
uncomfortable aphorism and freighted it with an accusation. She
applied it now as a search-light upon her jumbled