ches to her thin
arm--just to make certain-sure, y' know ...

This till the voice of Miss Whirtle spoke in her ear:

"Say, Kurrin, I like that! Whyn't you ask me to shake hands with your
swell dame friend?"

And Miss Heth, out in the crowded street, was heading toward Morland's
with an adventurous resolution in her mind.

It had needed but a touch to make up her mind here, whether she realized
it or not; and this touch the girl Corinne had given her. Now, too,
impulse met convenient opportunity. For two weeks she had been thinking
that if she _did_ ever happen to go to the Works, she would make a point
of going in some offhand, incidental sort of way, thus proving to
herself and the public that she had not the slightest responsibility for
whatever might be going on there. (How could she possibly have, no
matter what Mr. V.V. thought, with his exaggerated sympathies for the
poor?) Now here was Hugo waiting, perfectly fitted, to her need. What
could be more natural and incidental than this? She would simply be
showing her father's factory to her friend, Mr. Canning....

And perhaps Cally had an even deeper feeling of Mr. Canning's admirable
suitability in this connection. Somewhere just above the line of
consciousness, did there not lie the subtle thought that, if what she
saw at the Works _should_ have power to work dangerously on her own
sympathies, Hugo, with his strong worldly sense, his material
perfection, his whole splendid embodiment of the victorious-class ideal,
would be just the corrective she needed to keep her safe and sane?...

* * * * *

When she was seated in the car beside him, and he was tucking the robe
around her, Cally inquired with a deceptive air of indifference:

"You don't care particularly where we go, do you, Hugo?"

"The point seems of no importance whatever, now that I've got you."

"Then," said she, smiling, "I shall take you first to the Heth Cheroot
Works."

Canning's face, which had been buoyant from the moment his eyes
discovered her in the crowd, betrayed surprise and strong disapproval.
That, surely, would give his afternoon a slant different from his
plannings....

"I bar the Works. I feel all ways but sociological to-day. Let's go to
the country."

"Afterwards," said she, with the same lightness, clear proof of the
casual nature of the proposed excursion. "We'll simply pop in for a
minute or two, to see what it looks like--"

"But you c