As time went on, Janet sometimes wondered over the quiet manner in which these two people, Insall and Mrs. Maturin, took her visits as though they were matters of course, and gave her their friendship.  There was, really, no obvious excuse for her coming, not even that of the waifs for food—­and yet she came to be fed.  The sustenance they gave her would have been hard to define; it flowed not so much from what they said, as from what they were; it was in the atmosphere surrounding them.  Sometimes she looked at Mrs. Maturin to ask herself what this lady would say if she knew her history, her relationship with Ditmar—­which had been her real reason for entering the ranks of the strikers.  And was it fair for her, Janet, to permit Mrs. Maturin to bestow her friendship without revealing this?  She could not make up her mind as to what this lady would say.  Janet had had no difficulty in placing Ditmar; not much trouble, after her first surprise was over, in classifying Rolfe and the itinerant band of syndicalists who had descended upon her restricted world.  But Insall and Mrs. Maturin were not to be ticketed.  What chiefly surprised her, in addition to their kindliness, to their taking her on faith without the formality of any recommendation or introduction, was their lack of intellectual narrowness.  She did not, of course, so express it.  But she sensed, in their presence, from references casually let fall in their conversation, a wider culture of which they were in possession, a culture at once puzzling and exciting, one that she despaired of acquiring for herself.  Though it came from reading, it did not seem “literary,” according to the notion she had conceived of the term.  Her speculations concerning it must be focussed and interpreted.  It was a culture, in the first place, not harnessed to an obvious Cause:  something like that struck her.  It was a culture that contained tolerance and charity, that did not label a portion of mankind as its enemy, but seemed, by understanding all, to forgive all.  It had no prejudices; nor did it boast, as the Syndicalists boasted, of its absence of convention.  And little by little Janet connected it with Silliston.

“It must be wonderful to live in such a place as that,” she exclaimed, when the Academy was mentioned.  On this occasion Insall had left for a moment, and she was in the little room he called his “store,” alone with Mrs. Maturin, helping to sort out a batch of garments just received.

“It was there you first met Brooks, wasn’t it?” She always spoke of him as Brooks.  “He told me about it, how you walked out there and asked him about a place to lunch.”  Mrs. Maturin laughed.  “You didn’t know what to make of him, did you?”

“I thought he was a carpenter!” said Janet.  “I—­I never should have taken him for an author.  But of course I don’t know any other authors.”

“Well, he’s not like any of them, he’s just like himself.  You can’t put a tag on people who are really big.”