“You know you have no right whatever to talk like that to me,” said Esther, her sympathy beginning to pass over into annoyance.  “To-morrow you will be sorry.  Hadn’t you better go before you give yourself—­and me—­more cause for regret?”

“Ho, you’re sending me away, are you?” he said in angry surprise.

“I am certainly suggesting it as the wisest course.”

“Oh, don’t give me any of your fine phrases!” he said brutally.  “I see what it is—­I’ve made a mistake.  You’re a stuck-up, conceited little thing.  You think because you live in a grand house nobody is good enough for you.  But what are you after all? a Schnorrer—­that’s all.  A Schnorrer living on the charity of strangers.  If I mix with grand folks, it is as an independent man and an equal.  But you, rather than marry any one who mightn’t be able to give you carriages and footmen, you prefer to remain a Schnorrer.”

Esther was white and her lips trembled.  “Now I must ask you to go,” she said.

“All right, don’t flurry yourself!” he said savagely.  “You don’t impress me with your airs.  Try them on people who don’t know what you were—­a Schnorrer’s daughter.  Yes, your father was always a Schnorrer and you are his child.  It’s in the blood.  Ha!  Ha!  Ha!  Moses Ansell’s daughter!  Moses Ansell’s daughter—­a peddler, who went about the country with brass jewelry and stood in the Lane with lemons and schnorred half-crowns of my father.  You took jolly good care to ship him off to America, but ’pon my honor, you can’t expect others to forget him as quickly as you.  It’s a rich joke, you refusing me.  You’re not fit for me to wipe my shoes on.  My mother never cared for me to go to your garret; she said I must mix with my equals and goodness knew what disease I might pick up in the dirt; ’pon my honor the old girl was right.”

“She was right,” Esther was stung into retorting.  “You must mix only with your equals.  Please leave the room now or else I shall.”

His face changed.  His frenzy gave way to a momentary shock of consternation as he realized what he had done.

“No, no, Esther.  I was mad, I didn’t know what I was saying.  I didn’t mean it.  Forget it.”

“I cannot.  It was quite true,” she said bitterly.  “I am only a Schnorrer’s daughter.  Well, are you going or must I?”

He muttered something inarticulate, then seized his hat sulkily and went to the door without looking at her.

“You have forgotten something,” she said.

He turned; her forefinger pointed to the bouquet on the table.  He had a fresh access of rage at the sight of it, jerked it contemptuously to the floor with a sweep of his hat and stamped upon it.  Then he rushed from the room and an instant after she heard the hall door slam.