I extended my hand across the table, and placed it over her own.  A swift flush sprang to her cheeks, but she made no effort to draw away.  The action was so natural, so unaffectedly sincere, as to awaken no resentment.

“I am a young man,” I said earnestly, “but I have seen all kinds of life, both right and wrong, upper and lower.  I can realize how easy it is to sit in a club window, and criticize the people passing along the street.  That is an amusement of fools.  The inclination to become one of that class left me long ago.  Now I do not understand why you were upon the street tonight unattended; why you came to my assistance, or why you are here with me now.  I have no desire to pry into your secret.  I am content to remain grateful, to count this a red-letter day, because somehow, out of the mystery of the dark, we have thus been brought together.  An old professor used to say all life hinges on little things, and I believe our chance meeting is going to change both our lives, and for the better.  Without asking a question, or harboring a suspicion, I have faith in you—­is that enough?”

“You mean, you accept me upon trust?”

“Certainly; even as you must accept me.  I have no letters of recommendation.”

She was again looking directly toward me, her brown eyes earnest and fearless.

“I—­I confess I like your face,” she admitted, “and I believe you have tried to tell me the truth about yourself, but our situation is so peculiar, so different from what I have been taught was proper.”  She smiled sadly, her eyes misting.  “I am afraid you will not understand.  You can scarcely appreciate how strictly I have been brought up, or what such an unconventional meeting as this means to me.  I ought to be ashamed of myself.”

“But are you?”

“Really I—­I do not seem to be.  It almost frightens me to realize I am not, I do not understand myself at all.  Why should I talk thus frankly with you?  Why feel confidence in you?  It is not in accordance with the rules of my old life, nor of my nature.  Such actions would shock those who know me; they ought to shock me.  Am I in a dream, from which I am going to awaken presently?  Is that the explanation?”

I shook my head.

“No, not in that sense, at least.  Rather the other way around.  You have been in a dream all your life—­a dream that some social code somewhere constituted the real world.  Under these petty regulations of conduct you were not yourself at all, only a make-believe.  Something serious has occurred in your life, and changed all in an instant.  You have been thrown against the real world.  You find it not to be what you supposed.  It is no cause for shame or regret; womanhood lies deeper than any pretense at gentility.  Men seldom fail to recognize this fact—­their lives of struggle compel them to, but a woman finds it hard to understand.”

“To understand what?”