At one moment a man would be saying to himself:  “This woman knows more of the secrets of human nature than I can ever know.”  And the next he would be saying to himself:  “What a simple little thing she is!” The career of nearly every man is marked at the sharp corners with such women.  Speaking generally, Ruth Earp’s demeanour was hard and challenging.  It was evident that she could not be subject to the common weaknesses of her sex.  Denry was glad.

A youth of quick intelligence, he had perceived all the dangers of the mission upon which he was engaged, and had planned his precautions.

“May I come in a minute?” he asked in a purely business tone.  There was no hint in that tone of the fact that once she had accorded him a supper-dance.

“Please do,” said Ruth.

An agreeable flouncing swish of linen skirts as she turned to precede him down the passage!  But he ignored it.  That is to say, he easily steeled himself against it.

She led him to the large room which served as her dancing academy—­the bare-boarded place in which, a year and a half before, she had taught his clumsy limbs the principles of grace and rhythm.  She occupied the back part of a building of which the front part was an empty shop.  The shop had been tenanted by her father, one of whose frequent bankruptcies had happened there; after which his stock of the latest novelties in inexpensive furniture had been seized by rapacious creditors, and Mr Earp had migrated to Birmingham, where he was courting the Official Receiver anew.  Ruth had remained solitary and unprotected, with a considerable amount of household goods which had been her mother’s.  (Like all professional bankrupts, Mr Earp had invariably had belongings which, as he could prove to his creditors, did not belong to him.) Public opinion had justified Ruth in her enterprise of staying in Bursley on her own responsibility and renting part of the building, in order not to lose her “connection” as a dancing-mistress.  Public opinion said that “there would have been no sense in her going dangling after her wastrel of a father.”

“Quite a long time since we saw anything of each other,” observed Ruth in rather a pleasant style, as she sat down and as he sat down.

It was.  The intimate ecstasy of the supper-dance had never been repeated.  Denry’s exceeding industry in carving out his career, and his desire to graduate as an accomplished clubman, had prevented him from giving to his heart that attention which it deserved, having regard to his tender years.

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” said Denry.

Then there was a pause, and they both glanced vaguely about the inhospitable and very wooden room.  Now was the moment for Denry to carry out his pre-arranged plan in all its savage simplicity.  He did so.  “I’ve called about the rent, Miss Earp,” he said, and by an effort looked her in the eyes.

“The rent?” exclaimed Ruth, as though she had never in all her life heard of such a thing as rent; as though June 24 (recently past) was an ordinary day like any other day.