She had changed the gown which she had worn at her factory-work for her last winter’s best one.  Her young face was pale, almost severe, and she met him in a way which made her seem a stranger.

Robert realized suddenly that she had, as it were, closed the door upon all their old relations.  She seemed years older, and at the same time indefinably younger, since she was letting the childish impulses, which are at the heart of all of us untouched by time and experience, rise rampant and unchecked.  She was following the lead of her own convictions with the terrible unswerving of a child, even in the face of her own hurt.  She was, metaphorically, bumping her own head against the floor in her vain struggles for mastery over the mighty conditions of her life.

She bowed to Robert, and did not seem to see his proffered hand.

“Won’t you shake hands with me?” he asked, almost humbly, although his own wrath was beginning to rise.

“No, I would rather not,” she replied, with a straight look at him.  Her blue eyes did not falter in the least.

“May I sit down?” he said.  “I have something I would like to say to you.”

“Certainly, if you wish,” she replied.  Then she seated herself on the sofa, with Robert opposite in the crushed-plush easy-chair.

The room was still very cold, and the breath could be seen at the lips of each in white clouds.  Robert had on his coat, but Ellen had nothing over her blue gown.  It was on Robert’s tongue to ask if she were not cold, then he refrained.  The issues at stake seemed to make the question frivolous to offensiveness.  He felt that any approach to tenderness when Ellen was in her present mood would invoke an indignation for which he could scarcely blame her, that he must try to meet her on equal fighting-ground.

Ellen sat before him, her little, cold hands tightly folded in her lap, her mouth set hard, her steady fire of blue eyes on his face, waiting for him to speak.

Robert felt a decided awkwardness about beginning to talk.  Suddenly it occurred to him to wonder what there was to say.  It amounted to this:  they were in their two different positions, their two points of view—­would either leave for any argument of the other?  Then he wondered if he could, in the face of a girl who wore an expression like that, stoop to make an argument, for the utter blindness and deafness of her very soul to any explanation of his position was too evident in her face.

“I called to tell you, if you will permit me, how much I regret the unfortunate state of affairs at the factory,” Robert said, and the girl’s eyes met his as with a flash of flame.

“Why did you not prevent it, then?” asked she.  Ellen had all the fire of her family, but a steadiness of manner which never deserted her.  She was never violent.

“I could not prevent it,” replied Robert, in a low voice.

Ellen said nothing.