“And thirdly,” he continued gently, “because I love you, Hermione!”

“Love me!” she repeated, shaking her head.  “Ah, no, no—­your world is not my world nor ever could be.”

“Why, then, your world shall be mine.”

“Yes, but for how long?” she demanded feverishly.  “I wonder how long you could endure this world of mine?  I have had to work and slave all my life, but you—­look at your hands, so white and well-cared for—­yours are not the hands of a worker!”

“No, I’m afraid they’re not!” he admitted a little ruefully.

“Now look at mine—­see my fingers all roughened by my needle.”

“Such busy, capable hands!” said he, drawing a pace nearer, “hands always working for others, so strong to help the distressed.  I love and honour them more just because of those work-roughened fingers.”  As he spoke he reached out very suddenly, and clasping those slender hands, stooped and kissed them reverently.  Now, glancing up, he beheld her red lips quivering while her eyes were suffused all at once, as, drooping her head, she strove to loose his hold.

“Let me go!” she whispered, “I—­I—­ah, let me go!”

“Hermione,” he breathed, “oh, Hermione, how beautiful you are!” But at this she cried out almost as if he had struck her and, wrenching her hands free, covered her face.

“Oh, God!—­are all men the same?”

“Hermione,” he stammered, “Hermione—­what do you mean?”

“I mean,” she answered, proud head up-flung, “there were always plenty of men to tell me that—­when I was an office scrubwoman.  Well?” she demanded fiercely, stung by something in his look, “what did you think I’d been?  When a girl is left alone with a baby brother to care for, she can’t wait and pick and choose work that is nice and ladylike; she must take what comes along or starve—­so I worked.  I used to scrub floors and stairs in an office building.  I was very young then, and Arthur hardly more than a baby, and it was either that or starvation or—­” she flushed painfully, but her blue eyes met his regard unflinchingly; “anyway, I—­preferred to be a scrubwoman.  So now you know what I mean by your world not being my world, and I—­I guess you see how—­how impossible it all is.”

For a long moment was a silence wherein she stood turned from him, her trembling fingers busily folding and refolding a pleat in her apron while he stared down blindly at the floor.

“So you preferred the slavery of scrubbing floors, did you, Hermione?” he said at last.

“Of course!” she answered, without turning or lifting her heavy head.

“And that,” said he, his voice as placid, as serenely unhurried as usual, “and that is; just why all things are going to be possible to us—­yes, even turning my wasted years to profit.  Oh, my Hermione, help me to be worthy of you—­teach me what a glorious thing life may be—­”

“I?” she said wonderingly, her drooping head still averted, “but I am—­”