think I've any right to force myself on you after you showed me
so plainly you thought me a bounder," said Peter, not mincing his
words or stumbling over them. "But I'm not a bounder. There must be
some way of proving to you that I'm not. That's why I'm here for one
thing, though there's another---"

"What?" Winifred threw in, frightened, and thinking it better to cut
him short in time.

"I want you to meet my mother and let her help you to get some kind of
a position more--more worthy of your talents than this."

Win laughed aloud. "You run down your father's shop?"

"It's not good enough for you."

She flushed, and all her pent-up anger against the House of the Hands
tingled in that flush.

"You say so because I once had the great honour of being an
acquaintance of yours--and your sister's," she hurried breathlessly
on. "For all the rest of the people here, the people you don't know
and don't want to know, you think it good enough--too good,
perhaps--even splendid! It does look so, doesn't it? Magnificent! And
every one of your father's employees so happy--so fortunate to be
earning his wages. They're worms--that doesn't matter to rich men like
you, Mr. Rolls. Unless, perhaps, a girl happens to be pretty--or you
knew her once and remember that she was an individual. Oh, you must
feel I'm very ungrateful for your interest. Maybe you mean to be
kind--about your mother. But give your interest to those who need it.
I don't. I've seen your name in the papers--interviews--things you try
to do for the 'poor.' It's a sort of fad, isn't it--in your set? But
charity begins at home. You could do more by looking into things and
righting wrongs in your father's own shop than anywhere else in the
world."

She stopped, panting a little, her colour coming and going She had not
meant this at first. It was far removed from smiling civility,
this--tirade! But, as Sadie Kirk would say, "He had asked for it."

He was looking at her with his straight, level gaze. He was
astonished, maybe, but not angry. And she did not know whether to be
glad or sorry that she had not been able to rouse him to rage. His
look into her eyes was no longer that of a young man for a young
woman who means much to him. That light had died while the stream of
her words poured out.

For a moment, when she had ceased, they stared at each other in
silence, his face very grave, hers flushed and suggesting a
superficial repentance.

"Forgive me," she plu