‘Did you hear anything from the Peckovers of Clara Hewett?’ Sidney began by asking.

‘Not from them.  Jane has often spoken of her.’

Sidney again hesitated, then, from a fragmentary beginning, passed into a detailed account of his relations with Clara.  The girl herself, had she overheard him, could not have found fault with the way in which the story was narrated. lie represented his love as from the first without response which could give him serious hope; her faults he dealt with not as characteristics to be condemned, but as evidences of suffering, the outcome of cruel conditions.  Her engagement at the luncheon-bar he spoke of as a detestable slavery, which had wasted her health and driven her in the end to an act of desperation.  What now could be done to aid her?  John Hewett was still in ignorance of the step she had taken, and Sidney described himself as distracted by conflict between what he felt to be his duty, and fear of what might happen if he invoked Hewett’s authority.  At intervals through the day he had been going backwards and forwards in the street where Clara had her lodging.  He did not think she would seek to escape from her friends altogether, but her character and circumstances made it perilous for her to live thus alone.

‘What does she really wish for?’ inquired Snowdon, when there had been a short silence.

’She doesn’t know, poor girl!  Everything in the life she has been living is hateful to her—­everything since she left school.  She can’t rest in the position to which she was born; she aims at an impossible change of circumstances.  It comes from her father; she can’t help rebelling against what seem to her unjust restraints.  But what’s to come of it?  She may perhaps get a place in a large restaurant—­and what does that mean?’

He broke off, but in a moment resumed even more passionately: 

’What a vile, cursed world this is, where you may see men and women perish before your eyes, and no more chance of saving them than if they were going down in mid-ocean!  She’s only a child—­only just seventeen—­and already she’s gone through a lifetime of miseries.  And I, like a fool, I’ve often been angry with her; I was angry yesterday.  How can she help her nature?  How can we any of us help what we’re driven to in a world like this?  Clara isn’t made to be one of those who slave to keep themselves alive.  Just a chance of birth!  Suppose she’d been the daughter of a rich man; then everything we now call a fault in her would either have been of no account or actually a virtue.  Just because we haven’t money we may go to perdition, and comfortable people tell us we’ve only ourselves to blame.  Put them in our place!’

Snowdon’s face had gone through various changes as Sidney flung out his vehement words.  When he spoke, it was in a tone of some severity.

’Has she no natural affection for her father?  Does she care nothing for what trouble she brings him?’