She reflected what would have happened had any man of the usual type rescued her, even a man of wealth and position.  Of course, thought she, that man would have made himself known and would have called on her, ostensibly to inquire after her condition, yet really to ingratiate himself.  At this reflection she shuddered again.

“Ugh!” she whispered.  “He’d have tried to take liberties, any other man would.  He’d have presumed on the accident—­he’d have been—­oh, everything that that man was not, and could never be!”

Now her thoughts wandered to the brief talk they two had had there in the old sugar-house.  Every word of it seemed graven on her memory.  Disconnected bits of what he had told her, seemed to float before her mental vision—­:  “I?  Oh, I’m just an out-of-work—­don’t ask me who I am; and I won’t ask who you are.  We’re of different worlds, I guess—­don’t question me; I’d rather you wouldn’t.  Am I happy?  Yes, in a way, or shall be, when I’ve done what I mean to do!”

Such were some of his phrases that kept coming back to her, as she sat there in that luxurious and beautiful room, her book lying unread in her lap, the scent of flowers everywhere, and, merely for her taking, all the world’s treasures hers to command.  Strange man, indeed, and stranger speech, to her!  Never had she been thus spoken to.  His every word and thought and point of view, commonplace enough, perhaps, seemed peculiarly stimulating to her, and wakened eager curiosity, and would not let her live in peace, as heretofore.

“He said he was a Socialist, too,” she murmured, “whatever that may be.  But he—­he didn’t look it!  On the contrary, he looked remarkably clean and intelligent.  And the words he used were the words of an educated man.  Far better vocabulary than Waldron’s, for example; and as for poor little Van Slyke, and that set, why this man’s mind seems to have towered above them as the Palisades tower above the river!

“Happy?  Rich?  He said he was both—­and all he had was eighteen dollars and his two big hands!  Just fancy that, will you?  He might as well have said eighteen cents; it would have been about as much!  And I—­what did I tell him?  I told him I, with all my money and everything, was vacant, empty, futile!  Just those words.  And—­God help me, I—­I am!”

Suddenly, she felt her eyes were wet.  What was the reason?  Herself she knew not.  All she knew was that with her beautiful and queenly head bowed on the arm of her Japanese silk morning gown, as its loose sleeves lay along the edge of the Chippendale table, she was crying like a child.

Crying bitterly; and yet in a kind of new, strange joy.  Crying with tears so bitter-sweet that she, herself, could not half understand them; could not fathom the deeper meaning that lay hidden there.

“If!” she whispered to her heart.  “If only I were of his class, or he of mine!”

And Gabriel, what of him?