“I’m older, my friend, years older than when you used to know me.  And then I’m suffering from a serious bereavement, too.  I’ve lost my good opinion of myself.”

“Perhaps I can be of some help in restoring it to you.”

“That is the question....  Besides ageing immensely, I’m also getting frightfully modern, you see....”

And pursuing this latter thought a little, she presently replied to him: 

“Oh, no—­sociology, not politics....  I’ve been thinking for some time of inspecting the Works, to see if it needed repairs.  How horrid of you to laugh!  Don’t you think a woman should take some interest in how the money is made that she lives on?...”

She said this smiling, in the lightest way imaginable.  Small wonder if Hugo didn’t guess that she had thought twenty times in two weeks of actually doing this thing she spoke of.  Still less if it never occurred to him that he here confronted again the footprint of the condemned revivalist fellow, lately become his beloved’s sworn friend....

“Have you asked your father that question yet?”

“I thought I’d better get the advice of a prominent lawyer first.  Tell me what you think?”

“The point would early arise as to how you would know, on visiting the Works, whether or not it needed repairs.  You’ve inspected many factories, of course?”

“That’s true!—­I know nothing in the world about it.  Of course not!”

She spoke with a sort of eagerness; but went on presently in another tone:  “Do you know, I really don’t know anything ...?  I’ve never thought of it specially before, but all at once I’m constantly being impressed with my ignorance....”

And Hugo, with all his accomplishment and skill, could not thenceforward bring the conversation back where it belonged.  Only the time and the place were his to-night, it seemed....

“I,” said the girl, “belong to the useless classes.  I don’t pay my way.  I’m a social deadbeat.  So Mr. Pond told me the other night.  You must meet Mr. Pond, Hugo, the Director of the Settlement you gave all that money to last year.  He can be as horrid as anybody on earth, but is really nice in a rude interesting way.  He’s packed full of quarrelsome ideas.  You know, he doesn’t believe in giving money to the poor under any circumstances.  Harmful temporizing, he calls it ...”  A rather wide sweep here gave Mr. Pond’s views on poor relief in detail ...  “Are you listening, Hugo?  This information is being given for your benefit.  And oh, he wants me to learn millinery from Mme. Smythe (Jennie T. Smith, nee) and help him start a class in hat-trimming, to train girls for shop assistants.  Or perhaps I’ll learn cooking instead....”

“He seems to have aired his views to you pretty thoroughly,” said Canning, dryly.

He rose to go, a little later, rather amused by the skill with which he had been held off.  He admired the piquancy of spirit with which she took advantage of the altered positions.  For him tameness was the great disillusionizer; his undefined ideal was a woman who must be won anew every day.  Still, he had been rubbed a little the wrong way by the new-woman catch-phrases she had picked up somewhere, by the faintly argumentative note in her conversation....