“I made up my mind last night I wouldn’t stay in your office any longer,” she informed him.

“For God’s sake, why?” he exclaimed.  “I’ve been afraid of that.  Don’t go—­I don’t know what I’d do.  I’ll be careful—­I won’t get you talked about.”

“Talked about!” She tore herself away from him.  “Why should you get me talked about?” she cried.

He was frightened.  “No, no,” he stammered, “I didn’t mean—­”

“What did you mean?”

“Well—­as you say, you’re my stenographer, but that’s no reason why we shouldn’t be friends.  I only meant—­I wouldn’t do anything to make our friendship the subject of gossip.”

Suddenly she began to find a certain amusement in his confusion and penitence, she achieved a pleasurable sense of advantage, of power over him.

“Why should you want me?  I don’t know anything, I’ve never had any advantages—­and you have so much.  I read an article in the newspaper about you today—­Mr. Caldwell gave it to me—­”

“Did you like it?” he interrupted, naively.

“Well, in some places it was rather funny.”

“Funny?  How?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”  She had been quick to grasp in it the journalistic lack of restraint hinted at by Caldwell.  “I liked it, but I thought it praised you too much, it didn’t criticize you enough.”

He laughed.  In spite of his discomfort, he found her candour refreshing.  From the women to whom he had hitherto made love he had never got anything but flattery.

“I want you to criticize me,” he said.

But she went on relentlessly:—­“When I read in that article how successful you were, and how you’d got everything you’d started out to get, and how some day you might be treasurer and president of the Chippering Mill, well—­” Despairing of giving adequate expression to her meaning, she added, “I didn’t see how we could be friends.”

“You wanted me for a friend?” he interrupted eagerly.

“I couldn’t help knowing you wanted me—­you’ve shown it so plainly.  But I didn’t see how it could be.  You asked me where I lived—­in a little flat that’s no better than a tenement.  I suppose you would call it a tenement.  It’s dark and ugly, it only has four rooms, and it smells of cooking.  You couldn’t come there—­don’t you see how impossible it is?  And you wouldn’t care to be talked about yourself, either,” she added vehemently.

This defiant sincerity took him aback.  He groped for words.

“Listen!” he urged.  “I don’t want to do anything you wouldn’t like, and honestly I don’t know what I’d do if you left me.  I’ve come to depend on you.  And you may not believe it, but when I got that Bradlaugh order I thought of you, I said to myself ’She’ll be pleased, she’ll help me to put it over.’”

She thrilled at this, she even suffered him, for some reason unknown to herself, to take her arm again.

“How could I help you?”