--even if you were almost in rags!"

"I had been with the Sisters until I went to high school," she
murmured. "It makes a difference in a child's mind what is said and
thought by those around her."

"Of course. But, Dulcie, it is usually the unfortunate rule that the
lower subtly contaminates the higher, even in casual association--that
the weaker gradually undermines the stronger until it sinks to lesser
levels. It has not been so with you. Your clear mind remained
untarnished, your aspiration uncontaminated. Somewhere within you had
been born the quality of recognition; and when your eyes opened on
better things you recognised them and did not forget after they
disappeared----"

Again he ceased speaking, aware, suddenly, that for the first time he
was making the effort to analyse this girl for his own information.
Heretofore, he had accepted her, sometimes curious, sometimes amused,
puzzled, doubtful, even uneasy as her mind revealed itself by degrees
and her character glimmered through in little fitful gleams from that
still hidden thing, herself.

He began to speak again, before he knew he was speaking--indeed, as
though within him somewhere another man were using his lips and voice
as vehicles:

"You know, Dulcie, it's not going to end--our companionship. Your real
life is all ahead of you; it's already beginning--the life which is
properly yours to shape and direct and make the most of.

"I don't know what kind of life yours is going to be; I know, merely,
that your career doesn't lie down stairs in the superintendent's
lodgings. And this life of ours here in the studio is only temporary,
only a phase of your development toward clearer aims, higher
aspiration, nobler effort.

"Tranquillity, self-respect, intelligent responsibility, the
happiness of personal independence are the prizes: the path on which
you have started leads to the only pleasure man has ever really
known--labour."

He looked down at her hand lying within his own, stroked the slender
fingers thoughtfully, noticing the whiteness and fineness of them, now
that they had rested for three months from their patient martyrdom in
Soane's service.

"I'll talk to my mother and sister about it," he concluded. "All you
need is a start in whatever you're going to do in life. And you bet
you're going to get it, Sweetness!"

He patted her hand, laughed, and released it. She couldn't speak just
then--she tried to as she stood there, head averted and