"You certainly were wild and strange," laughed she.

"I was supercilious," said he. "And worse than that there is not.
However, as I have apologized, and you have accepted my apology, we
need waste no more time about that. You wished to persuade your father
to----"

"Just a moment!" interrupted she. "I've a question to ask. WHY did you
treat me--why have you been treating me so--so harshly?"

"Because I was afraid of you," replied he. "I did not realize it, but
that was the reason."

"Afraid of ME," said she. "That's very flattering."

"No," said he, coloring. "In some mysterious way I had been betrayed
into thinking of you as no man ought to think of a woman unless he is
in love with her and she with him. I am ashamed of myself. But I
shall conquer that feeling--or keep away from you.... Do you understand
what the street car situation is?"

But she was not to be deflected from the main question, now that it had
been brought to the front so unexpectedly and in exactly the way most
favorable to her purposes. "You've made me uneasy," said she. "I
don't in the least understand what you mean. I have wanted, and I
still want, to be friends with you--good friends--just as you and Selma
Gordon are--though of course I couldn't hope to be as close a friend as
she is. I'm too ignorant--too useless."

He shook his head--with him, a gesture that conveyed the full strength
of negation. "We are on opposite sides of a line across which
friendship is impossible. I could not be your friend without being
false to myself. You couldn't be mine unless you were by some accident
flung into the working class and forced to adopt it as your own. Even
then you'd probably remain what you are. Only a small part of the
working class as yet is at heart of the working class. Most of us
secretly--almost openly--despise the life of work, and dream and hope a
time of fortune that will put us up among the masters and the idlers."
His expressive eyes became eloquent. "The false and shallow ideas that
have been educated into us for ages can't be uprooted in a few brief
years."

She felt the admiration she did not try to conceal. She saw the proud
and splendid conception of the dignity of labor--of labor as a
blessing, not a curse, as a badge of aristocracy and not of slavery and
shame. "You really believe that, don't you?" she said. "I know it's
true. I say I believe it--who doesn't SAY so? But I don't FEEL it."

"That