“Now, my dear,” he said, “you’ve got to listen to me!”

“I am listening to you.”  She turned contemptuous grey eyes on him.

“Hang the letter!  I don’t mean that.  You’ve got to listen about other things!”

He stretched out his hand to touch her, and she drew back.  She rose, and her eyes flashed.

“If you touch me, Mr. Slotman, I shall—­” She paused; she looked about her; she picked up a heavy ebony ruler from his desk.  “I shall defend myself!”

“Don’t be a fool,” he said, yet took a step backwards, for there was danger in her eyes.

“Look here, you won’t get another job in a hurry, and you know it.  Shorthand typists are not wanted these days, the schools are turning out thousands of ’em, all more or less bad; but I—­I ain’t talking about that, dear—­” He took a step towards her, and then recoiled, seeing her knuckles shine whitely as she gripped the ruler.  “Come, be sensible!”

“Are you going to persist in this annoyance of me?” she demanded.  “Can’t I make you understand that I am here to do my work and for no other purpose?”

“Supposing,” he said, “supposing—­I—­I asked you to marry me?”

He had never meant to say this, yet he had said it, for the fascination of her was on him.

“Supposing you did?  Do you think I would consent to marry such a man as you?” She held her head very proudly.

“Do you mean that you would refuse?”

“Of course!”

He seemed staggered; he looked about him as one amazed.  He had kept this back as the last, the supreme temptation, the very last card in his hand; and he had played it, and behold, it proved to be no trump.

“I would neither marry you nor go out with you, nor do I wish to have anything to say to you, except so far as business is concerned.  As that seems impossible, it will be better for me to give you a week’s notice, Mr. Slotman.”

“You’ll be sorry for it,” he said—­“infernally sorry for it.  It ain’t pleasant to starve, my girl!”

“I had to do it, I had to, or I could not have respected myself any longer,” the girl thought, as she made her way home that evening to the boarding-house, where for two pounds a week she was fed and lodged.  But to be workless!  It had been the nightmare of her dreams, the haunting fear of her waking hours.

In her room at the back of the house, to which the jingle of the boarding-house piano could yet penetrate, she sat for a time in deep thought.  The past had held a few friends, folk who had been kind to her.  Pride had held her back; she had never asked help of any of them.  She thought of the Australian uncle who had invited her to come out to him when she should leave school, and then had for some reason changed his mind and sent her a banknote for a hundred pounds instead.  She had felt glad and relieved at the time, but now she regretted his decision.  Yet there had been a few friends; she wrote down the names as they occurred to her.