began to promise realisation.  She was not vain, but she knew herself a finer thing in mind and body than most of the girls with whom she worked.  She had read a great deal and learned much from Mr. Churchouse, who delighted to teach her, and from Mr. Best, with whom she was a prime favourite.  She had refused several offers of marriage and preserved a steady determination not to wed until there came a man who could lift her above work and give her a home that would embrace comfort and leisure.  She waited, confident that this would happen, for she knew that she could charm men.  As yet none had come who awakened any emotion of love in Sabina; and she told herself that real love might alter her values and send her to a poor man’s home after all.  If that happened, she was willing; but she thought it improbable; because, in her experience, poor men were ignorant, and she felt very sure no ignorant man would ever make her love him.

Then came into her life one very much beyond her dreams, and from an attitude of utmost caution before a physical beauty that fascinated her, she woke into tremendous excitation of mind at the discovery that he, too, was interested.  To her it seemed that he had plenty of brains.  His ideas were human and beautiful.  He declared the conditions of the workers to be not sufficiently considered.  He was full of nebulous theories for the amelioration of such conditions.  The spectacle of women working for a living caused Raymond both uneasiness and indignation.  To Sabina, it seemed that he was a chivalric knight of romance—­a being from a fairy story.  She had heard of such men, but never met with one outside a novel.  She glorified Raymond into something altogether sublime—­as soon as she found that he liked her.  He filled her head, and while her common-sense vainly tried to talk as Sally Groves had talked, each meeting with the young man threw her back upon the tremendous fact that he was deeply interested in her and did not care who knew it.  Common-sense could not modify that; nor would she listen to common-sense, when it suggested that Raymond’s record was uninspiring, and pointed to no great difference between him and other young men.  She told herself that he was misunderstood; she whispered to herself that she understood him.  It must be so, for he had declared it.  He had said that he was an idealist.  As a matter of fact he did not himself know the meaning of the word half as well as Sabina.

He filled her thoughts, and believing him to be honourable, in the everyday acceptation of the word, she knew she was safe and need not fear him.  This fact added to the joy and excitement of a situation that was merely thrilling, not difficult.  For she had to be receptive only, and that was easy:  the vital matter rested with him.  She did not do anything to encourage him, or take any step that her friends could call “forward.”  She just left it to him and knew not how far he meant to go, yet felt, in sanguine moments, that he would go all the way, sooner or later, and offer to marry her.  Her friends declared it would be so.  They were mightily interested, but not jealous, for the girls recognised Sabina’s advantages.