“Yes, yes,” he assented, “’twas my doing; the sin of all you did then lies at my door.  But since then, Sissy?” His look, his whole attitude, were an eager question, but she looked at him scornfully.

“Of course I’ve been good.  I go to church and say my prayers, and every one respects me.  I worked first in a family, but I didn’t let them call me a servant.  Then I got a place in the Grand Hotel.  Old Mr. Hutchins had got lame, so he couldn’t see after things, and I could.  I’ve done it now for six months, and it’s a different house.  I always do everything I do well, so we’ve made money this summer.  I’m thinking of making Mr. Hutchins take me into partnership; he’d rather do it than lose me.  I’m well thought of, Mr. Bates, by everybody, and I’m going to get rich.”

“Rich,” he echoed, quietly.  He looked now, his mind drawn by hers, at her fine clothes, and at the luxuriant red hair that was arranged with artificial display.  The painfulness of his breath and his weakness returned now within his range of feeling.

Without having expected to absorb his mind or knowing that she cared to do so, she still felt that instant that something was lost to her.  The whole stream of his life, that had been hers since she had entered the room, was no longer all for her.  She pressed on quietly to the business she had with him, fearing to lose a further chance.

“Look here, Mr. Bates!  It’s not more than a few hours since I heard you were here, so I’ve come to tell you that I’m alive and all right, and all that I’ve done that wasn’t very nice was your fault; but, look here, I’ve something else to say:  I don’t know why you’ve come here to see this old preacher, or who he is, or what you have to do with him; but it would be cruel and mean of you now, after driving me to do what I did, to tell the people here about it, and that my name isn’t White, you know.  I’ve very nice friends here, who’d be shocked, and it would do me harm.  I’m not going to accuse you to people of what you’ve done.  I’m sorry you’re ill, and that you’ve had all the trouble of hunting for me, and all that; but I’ve come to ask you now to keep quiet and not say who I am.”

He drew great sighs, as a wounded animal draws its breath, but he was not noticing the physical pain of breathing.  He did not catch at breath as eagerly as he was trying to catch at this new idea, this new Sissy, with a character and history so different from what he had supposed.  His was not a mind that took rational account of the differences between characters, yet he began to realise now that the girl who had made her own way, as this one had, was not the same as the girl he had imagined wandering helplessly among pathless hills, and dying feebly there.

She still looked at him as if demanding an answer to her request, looked at him curiously too, trying to estimate how ill he was.  He did not speak, and she, although she did not at all fathom his feeling, knew instinctively that some influence she had had over him was lessened.