the means of doing
it. Without troubling herself to take her leave Miss Walbrook went
down the steps.

Before turning toward Fifth Avenue she glanced back. Letty was
standing in the open doorway, her flaming eyes wide, her expression
puzzled and wounded. "It's nothing to me," Barbara repeated to herself
firmly; but because she was a lady, as she understood the word lady,
almost before she was a woman, she smiled faintly, with a distant, and
yet not discourteous, inclination of the head.

Chapter XVII

It was because she was a lady, as she understood the word lady, that
by the time she had walked the few steps into Fifth Avenue Miss
Walbrook already felt the inner reproach of having done something
mean. To do anything mean was so strange to her that she didn't at
first recognize the sensation. She only found herself repeating two
words, and repeating them uneasily: "_Noblesse oblige!_"

Nevertheless, on the principle that all's fair in love and war, she
fought this off. "Either she must go or I must." That she herself
should go was not to be considered; therefore the other must go, and
by the shortest way. The shortest way was the way she had shown her,
and which the girl herself was desirous to take. There was no more
than that to the situation.

There was no more than that to the situation unless it was that the
strong was taking a poor advantage of the weak. But then, why
shouldn't the strong take any advantage it possessed? What otherwise
was the use of being strong? The strong prevailed, and the weak went
under. That was the law of life. To suppose that the weak must prevail
because it was weak was sheer sentimentality. All the same, those two
inconvenient words kept dinning in her ears: "_Noblesse oblige!_"

She began to question the honesty which in Letty's presence had
convinced her. It was probably not honesty at all. She had known
girls in the Bleary Street Settlement who could persuade her that
black was white, but who had proved on further knowledge to be lying
all round the compass. When it wasn't lying it was bluff. It was
possible that Letty was only bluffing, that in her pretense at
magnanimity she was simply scheming for a bigger price. In that case
she, Barbara, had called the bluff very skilfully. She had put her in
a position in which she could be taken at her word. Since she was
ready to go, she could go. Since she was ready to go to the bad....

Miss Walbrook was not prim. She knew