Your work has no right to make such demands."

"Be reasonable," she said, flushing. "Don't talk as if personal
dignity were within the reach of everybody. It's the most expensive of
privileges. And nothing to be so very proud of--generally the product
of somebody else's humiliations, handed down. But the humiliations must
have been successful, handed down in cash. My father drove a cab and
died in debt. His name was Cassidy. I shall be dignified some day--some
day! But you see I must make it possible myself, since nobody has done
it for me."

"Well, then, I'll alter my complaint. Why should you play with your
sincerity?"

"I didn't play with it," she flashed; "I abandoned it. I am an actress."

They often permitted themselves such candours; to all appearance their
discussion had its usual equable quality, and I am certain that Arnold
was not even aware of the tension upon his nerves. He fidgeted with the
tassel of his ceinture, and she watched his moving fingers. Presently
she spoke quietly, in a different key.

"I sometimes think," she said, "of a child I knew, in the other years.
She had the simplest nature, the finest instincts. Her impulses, within
her small limits, were noble--she was the keenest, loyalest little
person; her admirations rather made a fool of her. When I look at the
woman she is now I think the uses of life are hard, my friend--they are
hard."

He missed the personal note; he took what she said on its merits as an
illustration.

"And yet," he replied, "they can be turned to admirable purpose."

"I wonder!" Hilda exclaimed brightly. She had turned down the leaf of
that mood. "But we are not cheerful--let us be cheerful. For my part I
am rejoicing as I have not rejoiced since the first of December. Look at
this!"

She opened a small black leather bag, and poured money out of it, in
notes and currency, into her lap.

"Is it a legacy?"

"It's pay," she cried, with pleasure dimpling about her lips. "I have
been paid--we have all been paid! It's so unusual--it makes me
feel quite generous. Let me see. I'll give you this, and this, and
this,"--she counted into her open palm ten silver rupees,--"all those I
will give you for your mission. Prends!" and she clinked them together
and held them out to him.

He had risen to go, and his face looked grey and small. Something in him
had mutinied at the levity, the quick change of her mood. He could
only draw into his shell; doubtless he thought that