“And that is the sort of thing you store up and value,” he said, when she had finished.  “These persons will add to your knowledge of life.”

“Extremely,” she replied to all of it.

“I suppose they will in their measure.  But personally I could wish you had not gone.  Your work has no right to make such demands.”

“Be reasonable,” she said, flushing.  “Don’t talk as if personal dignity were within the reach of everybody.  It’s the most expensive of privileges.  And nothing to be so very proud of—­generally the product of somebody else’s humiliations, handed down.  But the humiliations must have been successful, handed down in cash.  My father drove a cab and died in debt.  His name was Murphy.  I shall be dignified some day—­some day!  But you see I must make it possible myself, since nobody has done it for me.”

“Well, then, I’ll alter my complaint.  Why should you play with your sincerity?”

“I didn’t play with it,” she flashed; “I abandoned it.  I am an actress.”

They often permitted themselves such candours; to all appearance their discussion had its usual equable quality, and I am certain that Arnold was not even aware of the tension upon his nerves.  He fidgeted with the tassel of his ceinture, and she watched his moving fingers.  Presently she spoke, quietly, in a different key.

“I sometimes think,” she said, “of a child I knew in the other years.  She had the simplest nature, the finest instincts.  Her impulses, within her little limits, were noble—­she was the keenest, loyalist little person; her admirations rather made a fool of her.  When I look at the woman as she is now I think the uses of life are hard, my friend—­they are hard.”

He missed the personal note; he took what she said on its merits as an illustration.

“And yet,” he replied, “they can be turned to admirable purpose.”

“I wonder!” Hilda exclaimed brightly.  She had turned down the leaf of that mood.  “But we are not cheerful—­let us be cheerful.  For my part, I am rejoicing as I have not rejoiced since the first of December.  Look at this!”

She opened a small black leather bag and poured money out of it, notes and currency, into her lap.

“Is it a legacy?”

“It’s pay,” she cried, with pleasure dimpling about her lips.  “I have been paid—­we have all been paid!  It’s so unusual—­it makes me feel quite generous.  Let me see.  I’ll give you this, and this, and this”—­she counted into her open palm ten silver rupees—­“all those I will give you for your mission. Prends!” and she clinked them together and held them out to him.

He had risen to go, and his face looked grey and small.  Something in him had mutinied at the levity, the quick change of her mood.  He could only draw into his shell; doubtless he thought that a legitimate and inoffensive proceeding.

“Thanks, no,” he said, “I think not.  We desire people’s prayers, rather than their alms.”