e clasp of his
hand was so soft and yet so forceful, that it chilled the heart.
She was afraid of him, repelled by him, and yet attracted.

He looked at the athletic, seemingly fearless girl, and he
detected in her a kinship with his own dark corruption.
Immediately, he knew they were akin.

His manner was polite, almost foreign, and rather cold. He
still laughed in his curious, animal fashion, suddenly wrinkling
up his wide nose, and showing his sharp teeth. The fine beauty
of his skin and his complexion, some almost waxen quality, hid
the strange, repellent grossness of him, the slight sense of
putrescence, the commonness which revealed itself in his rather
fat thighs and loins.

Winifred saw at once the deferential, slightly servile,
slightly cunning regard he had for Ursula, which made the girl
at once so proud and so perplexed.

"But is this place as awful as it looks?" the young girl
asked, a strain in her eyes.

"It is just what it looks," he said. "It hides nothing."

"Why are the men so sad?"

"Are they sad?" he replied.

"They seem unutterably, unutterably sad," said Ursula, out of
a passionate throat.

"I don't think they are that. They just take it for
granted."

"What do they take for granted?"

"This--the pits and the place altogether."

"Why don't they alter it?" she passionately protested.

"They believe they must alter themselves to fit the pits and
the place, rather than alter the pits and the place to fit
themselves. It is easier," he said.

"And you agree with them," burst out his niece, unable to
bear it. "You think like they do--that living human beings
must be taken and adapted to all kinds of horrors. We could
easily do without the pits."

He smiled, uncomfortably, cynically. Ursula felt again the
revolt of hatred from him.

"I suppose their lives are not really so bad," said Winifred
Inger, superior to the Zolaesque tragedy.

He turned with his polite, distant attention.

"Yes, they are pretty bad. The pits are very deep, and hot,
and in some places wet. The men die of consumption fairly often.
But they earn good wages."

"How gruesome!" said Winifred Inger.

"Yes," he replied gravely. It was his grave, solid,
self-contained manner which made him so much respected as a
colliery manager.

The servant came in to ask where they would have tea.

"Put it in the summer-house, Mrs. Smith," he said.

The fair-haired, good-looking young woman went out.

"Is she marrie