“I have called on her twice,” said Robert, as if answering a question.  His relations with the older man had become very close, almost like those of father and son, though Risley was hardly old enough for that relation.

“And you haven’t been since she went to work?”

“No.”

“But you would have, had she gone to college instead of going to work in a shoe-factory?” Risley’s voice had a tone of the gentlest conceivable sarcasm.

Robert colored.  “Yes, I suppose so,” he said.  Then he turned to Risley with a burst of utter frankness.  “Hang it! old fellow,” he said, “you know how I have been brought up; you know how she—­you know all about it.  What is a fellow to do?”

“Do what he pleases.  If it would please me to call on that splendid young thing, I should call if I were the Czar of all the Russias.”

“Well, I will call,” said Robert.

Chapter XXXVIII

The very next evening Robert Lloyd went to call on Ellen.  As he started out he was conscious of a strange sensation of shock, as if his feet had suddenly touched firm ground.  All these months since Ellen had been working in the factory he had been vacillating.  He was undoubtedly in love with her; he did not for a moment cheat himself as to that.  When he caught a glimpse of her fair head among the other girls, he realized how unspeakably dear she was to him.  Ellen never entered nor left the factory that he did not know it.  Without actually seeing her, he was conscious of her presence always.  He acknowledged to himself that there was no one like her for him, and never would be.  He tried to interest himself in other young women, but always there was Ellen, like the constant refrain of a song.  All other women meant to him not themselves, but Ellen.  Womanhood itself was Ellen for his manhood.  He knew it, and yet that strain of utterly impassionate judgment and worldly wisdom which was born in him kept him from making any advances to her.  Now, however, the radicalism of Risley had acted like a spur to his own inclination.  His judgment was in abeyance.  He said to himself that he would give it up; he would go to see the girl—­that he would win her if he could.  He said to himself that she had been wronged, that Risley was right about her, that she was good and noble.

As the car drew near the Brewsters, his tenderness seemed to outspeed the electricity.  The girl’s fair face was plain before his eyes, as if she were actually there, and it was idealized and haloed as with the light of gold and precious stones.  All at once, since he had given himself loose rein, he overtook, as it were, the true meaning of her.  “The dear child,” he thought, with a rush of tenderness like pain—­“the dear child.  There she gave up everything and went to work, and let us blame her, rather than have her father blamed.  The dear, proud child.  She did that rather than seem to beg for more help.”