“You did, indeed, and I apologize humbly, but am I not right in thinking that I have seen you somewhere before?  Are you not employed in the department store of Denton, Day & Co.?”

Faith looked at him in surprise.

“I have worked there two days,” she began, a little hastily.

“And I have seen you twice,” replied the stranger, promptly.  “Your face is a sweet one.  I could not forget it.”

The words were spoken so quietly that Faith could not resent them.  She was moving slowly toward her home now, feeling a little bit nervous.

“That is a dreadful life for a girl,” went on the man, very quietly.  “It is agony for the poor things, both of mind and body!”

“You are right, sir,” cried Faith, who had thought instantly of Miss Jennings.  “The shop girls’ life is one continuous drudgery.  She is the slave of circumstances and the victim of conditions.”

“I am surprised that so many enter the life.  There are surely other vocations.  They choose the hardest one possible.”

“But do they choose?” asked Faith, who had become interested in spite, of herself.  “Are they not driven this way or that, according to their opportunities?  In my case there was no choice.  I had tried everything else.  Hard as it is, I am thankful for my present employment.”

The man looked at her sharply.  There was genuine sympathy in his face.  Almost involuntarily he broke out in violent sentences.

“You girls are to blame in great measure for all this, and where the fault is not yours it lies with your parents!  Instead of cultivating your graces you bedraggle them with labor!  Instead of marketing your smiles you trade in blood and sinew!  Every day in that store means a year off of your life; every anxious moment means an inroad into your rightful happiness!  Why will you not see the folly of your ways?  Why can you not understand that it is a false morality which is killing you?  Why, if I were a girl”—­his voice had dropped to the most persuasive cadence—­“I should value my beauty too highly to hide it behind a counter, and my subsistence should be the boundless reward of affection, rather than the niggardly recompense for wasted tissues!  Of course, I shock you, because you have done no thinking for yourself.  A lot of narrow souled ancestors have done thinking for you.  They have brought you here to let you shift for yourself, but woe to you if you offend one of their petty notions of honor.  See, child!  I have money, I have constant ease.  Could you blame me for offering to share it with youth and beauty?”

As he breathed these words he gazed at Faith eagerly.  The soul in the man had vanished.  He was dangerously in earnest.

The thrill that flowed through Faith’s veins as he spoke was not of fear, for, child that she was, she understood his meaning, and his words stirred the deepest channels of her soul—­she was more grieved than shocked at the man’s distorted reasoning.