ands
always working for others, so strong to help the distressed. I love and
honour them more just because of those work-roughened fingers." As he
spoke he reached out very suddenly, and clasping those slender hands,
stooped and kissed them reverently. Now, glancing up, he beheld her red
lips quivering while her eyes were suffused all at once, as, drooping
her head, she strove to loose his hold.

"Let me go!" she whispered, "I--I--ah, let me go!"

"Hermione," he breathed, "oh, Hermione, how beautiful you are!" But at
this she cried out almost as if he had struck her and, wrenching her
hands free, covered her face.

"Oh, God!--are all men the same?"

"Hermione," he stammered, "Hermione--what do you mean?"

"I mean," she answered, proud head up-flung, "there were always plenty
of men to tell me that--when I was an office scrubwoman. Well?" she
demanded fiercely, stung by something in his look, "what did you think
I'd been? When a girl is left alone with a baby brother to care for,
she can't wait and pick and choose work that is nice and ladylike; she
must take what comes along or starve--so I worked. I used to scrub
floors and stairs in an office building. I was very young then, and
Arthur hardly more than a baby, and it was either that or starvation
or--" she flushed painfully, but her blue eyes met his regard
unflinchingly; "anyway, I--preferred to be a scrubwoman. So now you know
what I mean by your world not being my world, and I--I guess you see
how--how impossible it all is."

For a long moment was a silence wherein she stood turned from him, her
trembling fingers busily folding and refolding a pleat in her apron
while he stared down blindly at the floor.

"So you preferred the slavery of scrubbing floors, did you, Hermione?"
he said at last.

"Of course!" she answered, without turning or lifting her heavy head.

"And that," said he, his voice as placid, as serenely unhurried as
usual, "and that is; just why all things are going to be possible to
us--yes, even turning my wasted years to profit. Oh, my Hermione, help
me to be worthy of you--teach me what a glorious thing life may be--"

"I?" she said wonderingly, her drooping head still averted, "but I am--"

"Just the one woman I want to be my own for ever and always, more--far
more than I have ever wanted anything in my life."

"But," she whispered, "I am only--"

"The best, the noblest I have ever known."

"But a--scrubwoman!"

"With dimples in