“Why on earth perfectly comfortable, supposedly Christian human beings should want personally to know anything about uncomfortable, unfit, under-paid ones—­”

“Oh, but I think they ought to!” Again the pretty little creature in green chiffon nodded toward me.  “But you won’t let Miss Heath have a chance to say anything!  Some one told me such queer people came to see her.  Factory-girls and working-women and—­oh—­all sorts of people like that.  Is it really so, Miss Heath?”

“Very interesting people come to see me.  They are undoubtedly of different sorts, but one of the illuminating discoveries of life is that human beings are amazingly alike.  Veneering is a great help, of course.  If you knew my friends you would find—­”

“I’d love to know them.  I always have liked queer people.  I’ve been crazy to come and see you, but mother won’t let—­ I mean—­”

“Mrs. Henderson says she met a young man when she went to see you who was the cleverest person she ever talked, to.”  Gentle Annie Gaines was venturing to come to my help.  “He seemed to know something of everything.  She couldn’t remember his name.”

“It’s difficult to remember.  He’s a Russian Jew.  Schrioski, is his name.”  At the head of the table I felt Kitty squirm, knew she was twisting her feet in fear and indignation.  I turned to her English guest.

“I have another friend who will be so glad to know I have met you, Mr. Garrott.  He is one of your most intelligent and intense admirers.  He has read, I think, everything you’ve written.”

Absorbed in his salad, evidently new and to his liking, Mr. Garrott was not impressed by, or appreciative of, my attempt to follow Kitty’s instructions.  With any reservations of my bad taste in talking shop I would have agreed, still, something was due Kitty.  “He tells me”—­I refused to be ignored—­“that he keeps an advance order for everything you write; buys your books as soon as they are published.”

“Buys them!” With the only quick movement he had made, Mr. Garrott turned to me.  “I’d like to meet him.  I’m glad to know there’s somebody in America who buys and reads my books.  Usually those who buy don’t read, and those who read don’t buy.  But tell me—­” Again the corners of his mouth drooped, and again his spectacles were adjusted.  “Why did you go in for—­for living in a run-down place and meeting such odds and ends as they say you meet?  You’re not old enough for things of that kind.  An ugly woman, uninteresting, unprovided for—­she might take them up.”  He stared at me as if for physical explanation of unreasonable peculiarities.  “You believe, I fancy—­”

“That a woman is capable of deciding for herself what she wants to do.”

Again Jack Peebles’s near-sighted eyes blinked at me, but in his voice there was no longer chaffing.  “She believes even more remarkable things than that.  Believes if people, all sorts, knew one another better, understood one another better, there would be less injustice, less indifference, and greater friendship and regard.  Rather an uncomfortable creed for those who don’t want to know, who prefer—­”