age. So I knew about you."

"About my mother?" asked she. "Is that what you mean?"

"Oh, you need not look so ashamed," said he, graciously, pityingly.

"I am not ashamed," said she. But she did not tell him that her
look came from an awful fear that he was about to make her
ashamed of him.

"No, I suppose you aren't," he went on, incensed by this further
evidence of her lack of a good woman's instincts. "I really
ought not to blame you. You were born wrong--born with the moral
sense left out."

"Yes, I suppose so," said she, wearily.

"If only you had lied to me--told me the one lie!" cried he.
"Then you wouldn't have destroyed my illusion. You wouldn't have
killed my love."

She grew deathly white; that was all.

"I don't mean that I don't love you still," he hurried on. "But
not in the same way. That's killed forever."

"Are there different ways of loving?" she asked.
"How can I give you the love of respect and trust--now?"

"Don't you trust me--any more?"

"I couldn't. I simply couldn't. It was hard enough before on
account of your birth. But now---- Trust a woman who had been
a--a--I can't speak the word. Trust you? You don't understand
a man."

"No, I don't." She looked round drearily. Everything in ruins.
Alone again. Outcast. Nowhere to go but the streets--the life
that seemed the only one for such as she. "I don't understand
people at all. . . . Do you want me to go?"

She had risen as she asked this. He was beside her instantly.
"Go!" he cried. "Why I couldn't get along without you."

"Then you love me as I love you," Said she, putting her arms
round him. "And that's all I want. I don't want what you call
respect. I couldn't ever have hoped to get that, being born as
I was--could I? Anyhow, it doesn't seem to me to amount to much.
I can't help it, Rod--that's the way I feel. So just love me--do
with me whatever you will, so long as it makes you happy. And I
don't need to be trusted. I couldn't think of anybody but you."

He felt sure of her again, reascended to the peak of the moral
mountain. "You understand, we can never get married. We can
never have any children."

"I don't mind. I didn't expect that. We can _love_--can't we?"

He took her face between his hands. "What an exquisite face it
is," he said, "soft and smooth! And what clear, honest eyes!
Where is _it?_ Where _is_ it? It _must_ be there!"

"What, Rod?"

"The--the dirt."

She did not w