why?" he exclaimed. "I've been afraid of that. Don't
go--I don't know what I'd do. I'll be careful--I won't get you talked
about."

"Talked about!" She tore herself away from him. "Why should you get me
talked about?" she cried.

He was frightened. "No, no," he stammered, "I didn't mean--"

"What did you mean?"

"Well--as you say, you're my stenographer, but that's no reason why we
shouldn't be friends. I only meant--I wouldn't do anything to make our
friendship the subject of gossip."

Suddenly she began to find a certain amusement in his confusion and
penitence, she achieved a pleasurable sense of advantage, of power over
him.

"Why should you want me? I don't know anything, I've never had any
advantages--and you have so much. I read an article in the newspaper
about you today--Mr. Caldwell gave it to me--"

"Did you like it?" he interrupted, naively.

"Well, in some places it was rather funny."

"Funny? How?"

"Oh, I don't know." She had been quick to grasp in it the journalistic
lack of restraint hinted at by Caldwell. "I liked it, but I thought it
praised you too much, it didn't criticize you enough."

He laughed. In spite of his discomfort, he found her candour refreshing.
From the women to whom he had hitherto made love he had never got
anything but flattery.

"I want you to criticize me," he said.

But she went on relentlessly:--"When I read in that article how
successful you were, and how you'd got everything you'd started out to
get, and how some day you might be treasurer and president of the
Chippering Mill, well--" Despairing of giving adequate expression to her
meaning, she added, "I didn't see how we could be friends."

"You wanted me for a friend?" he interrupted eagerly.

"I couldn't help knowing you wanted me--you've shown it so plainly. But I
didn't see how it could be. You asked me where I lived--in a little flat
that's no better than a tenement. I suppose you would call it a tenement.
It's dark and ugly, it only has four rooms, and it smells of cooking. You
couldn't come there--don't you see how impossible it is? And you wouldn't
care to be talked about yourself, either," she added vehemently.

This defiant sincerity took him aback. He groped for words.

"Listen!" he urged. "I don't want to do anything you wouldn't like, and
honestly I don't know what I'd do if you left me. I've come to depend on
you. And you may not believe it, but when I got that Bradlaugh order I
thought of