The young man who can look on them we call fallen women with a noble eye, is to my mind he that is most nobly begotten of the race, and likeliest to be the sire of a noble line.  Robert was less than he; but Dahlia’s aspect helped him to his rightful manliness.  He saw that her worth survived.

The creature’s soul had put no gloss upon her sin.  She had sinned, and her suffering was manifest.

She had chosen to stand up and take the scourge of God; after which the stones cast by men are not painful.

By this I mean that she had voluntarily stripped her spirit bare of evasion, and seen herself for what she was; pleading no excuse.  His scourge is the Truth, and she had faced it.

Innumerable fanciful thoughts, few of them definite, beset the mind at interviews such as these; but Robert was distinctly impressed by her look.  It was as that of one upon the yonder shore.  Though they stood close together, he had the thought of their being separate—­a gulf between.

The colourlessness of her features helped to it, and the odd little close-fitting white linen cap which she wore to conceal the stubborn-twisting clipped curls of her shorn head, made her unlike women of our world.  She was dressed in black up to the throat.  Her eyes were still luminously blue, and she let them dwell on Robert one gentle instant, giving him her hand humbly.

“Dahlia!—­my dear sister, I wish I could say; but the luck’s against me,” Robert began.

She sat, with her fingers locked together in her lap, gazing forward on the floor, her head a little sideways bent.

“I believe,” he went on—­“I haven’t heard, but I believe Rhoda is well.”

“She and father are well, I know,” said Dahlia.

Robert started:  “Are you in communication with them?”

She shook her head.  “At the end of some days I shall see them.”

“And then perhaps you’ll plead my cause, and make me thankful to you for life, Dahlia?”

“Rhoda does not love you.”

“That’s the fact, if a young woman’s to be trusted to know her own mind, in the first place, and to speak it, in the second.”

Dahlia, closed her lips.  The long-lined underlip was no more very red.  Her heart knew that it was not to speak of himself that he had come; but she was poor-witted, through weakness of her blood, and out of her own immediate line of thought could think neither far nor deep.  He entertained her with talk of his notions of Rhoda, finishing: 

“But at the end of a week you will see her, and I dare say she’ll give you her notions of me.  Dahlia! how happy this’ll make them.  I do say thank God! from my soul, for this.”

She pressed her hands in her lap, trembling.  “If you will, please, not speak of it, Mr. Robert.”

“Say only you do mean it, Dahlia.  You mean to let them see you?”

She shivered out a “Yes.”

“That’s right.  Because, a father and a sister—­haven’t they a claim?  Think a while.  They’ve had a terrible time.  And it’s true that you’ve consented to a husband, Dahlia?  I’m glad, if it is; and he’s good and kind.  Right soul-glad I am.”