-"

The eyes wandered back from the shadows to rest on him again. They
were sorrowful eyes, and unabashed. A child's would have had this
unreproachful ache in them, or a dog's. Though he didn't know what it
meant it disturbed him into leaving his sentence there.

It occurred to him then that they were forgetting the subject in hand.
He had not expected to be able to converse with her, yet something
like conversation had been taking place. It had come to him, too, that
she had a mind, and now that he really looked at her he saw that the
face was intelligent. Yesterday that face had been no more to him than
a smudge, without character, and almost featureless, while to-day....

The train of his thought being twofold he could think along one line,
and speak along another. "So if you go to see my lawyer he'll suggest
different things that you could do----"

"I'd rather do whatever 'ud make it easiest for you."

"You're very kind, but I think I'd better not suggest. I'll leave that
to him and you. He knows already that he's to supply you with whatever
money you need for the present; and after everything is settled I'll
see that you have----"

The damask flush which Steptoe had admired stole over a face flooded
with alarm. She spoke as she rose, drawing a little back from him. "I
do' want any money."

He looked up at her in protestation. "Oh, but you must take it."

She was still drawing back, as if he was threatening her with
something that would hurt. "I do' want to."

"But it was part of our bargain. You don't understand that I
couldn't----"

"I didn't make no such--" She checked herself. Her mother had rebuked
her for this form of speech a thousand times. She said the sentence
over as she felt he would have said it, as the people would have said
it among whom she had lived as a child. The cadence of his speech, the
half forgotten cadences of theirs, helped her ear and her intuitions.
"I didn't make any such bargain," she managed to bring out, at last.
"You said you'd give me money; but I never said I'd take it."

He too rose. He began to feel troubled. Perhaps she wouldn't be at his
disposition after all. "But--but I couldn't stand it if you didn't let
me----"

"And I couldn't stand it if I did."

"But that's not reasonable. It's part of the whole thing that I should
look out for your future after what----"

"I know what you mean," she declared, tremblingly. "You think that
because I'm--I'm beneath you th