n an insight into character and the
intrigue that went on all around her, that he marvelled at her
innocence and sometimes almost hated her for it, and for her refusal to
accept the position assigned to women in society. His blague, his
bluff were useless with her. He had painfully to reveal to her his
best, the kindly, tender-hearted, generous simpleton that at heart he
was. Loving her, he could not help himself, and, loving her, he raged
against her.

She would never allow him to visit her in her rooms. That was a
privilege which she reserved for Verschoyle. Her rooms were her
sanctuary, her refuge, the place where she could be simple and human,
and be the untouched Clara Day who had lived in childish glee with her
grandfather and most powerfully alone in her imagination with various
characters, more real than any of the persons with whom she ever came
in contact until she met Charles Mann.... He was never admitted to her
rooms, nor was Sir Henry Butcher, in whom she had for the first time
encountered the ordinary love of the ordinary sentimental male. This
left her so unmoved that she detested it, with all its ridiculous
parade of emotions, its stealthy overtures, its corrosive dishonesty,
which made a frank interchange of thought and feeling impossible....
The thing had happened to her before, but she had been too young to
realise it, or to understand to the full its essential possessiveness,
which to her spirit was its chief offence.

She had to rebuke Sir Henry. One week she found her salary trebled.
She returned the extra ten pounds to Mr Gillies, the manager, pointing
out that she was doing the same work, small and unimportant, and that
it was not fair to the other girls.

'The Chief believes in you, Miss Day. He doesn't want you to leave us.'

'This is the very kind of thing to drive me out.'

'You're not like other girls, Miss Day....' said Mr Gillies. 'Indeed,
I often wonder what a young lady who wears her clothes as you do is
doing in the theatre.'

Clara's expression silenced him, and she was enraged with the Chief for
exposing her to such familiarity. She taxed Sir Henry with it, and he
was quick to see his mistake, and so warmly pleaded that he had only
meant it as a kindness that she could not but forgive him. He implored
her to let him merit her forgiveness by making her a present of
anything she desired; but she desired nothing.

'I'm at your feet,' he said, and he went down on his