n common. The social instinct was strong in them, yet they had
remained lonely because they could not satisfy that instinct and at that
same time satisfy their desire for cleanness and decency.

If ever a girl of the working class had led the sheltered life, it was
Genevieve. In the midst of roughness and brutality, she had shunned all
that was rough and brutal. She saw but what she chose to see, and she
chose always to see the best, avoiding coarseness and uncouthness without
effort, as a matter of instinct. To begin with, she had been peculiarly
unexposed. An only child, with an invalid mother upon whom she attended,
she had not joined in the street games and frolics of the children of the
neighbourhood. Her father, a mild-tempered, narrow-chested, anaemic
little clerk, domestic because of his inherent disability to mix with
men, had done his full share toward giving the home an atmosphere of
sweetness and tenderness.

An orphan at twelve, Genevieve had gone straight from her father's
funeral to live with the Silversteins in their rooms above the candy
store; and here, sheltered by kindly aliens, she earned her keep and
clothes by waiting on the shop. Being Gentile, she was especially
necessary to the Silversteins, who would not run the business themselves
when the day of their Sabbath came round.

And here, in the uneventful little shop, six maturing years had slipped
by. Her acquaintances were few. She had elected to have no girl chum
for the reason that no satisfactory girl had appeared. Nor did she
choose to walk with the young fellows of the neighbourhood, as was the
custom of girls from their fifteenth year. "That stuck-up doll-face,"
was the way the girls of the neighbourhood described her; and though she
earned their enmity by her beauty and aloofness, she none the less
commanded their respect. "Peaches and cream," she was called by the
young men--though softly and amongst themselves, for they were afraid of
arousing the ire of the other girls, while they stood in awe of
Genevieve, in a dimly religious way, as a something mysteriously
beautiful and unapproachable.

For she was indeed beautiful. Springing from a long line of American
descent, she was one of those wonderful working-class blooms which
occasionally appear, defying all precedent of forebears and environment,
apparently without cause or explanation. She was a beauty in color, the
blood spraying her white skin so deliciously as to ea