Rose-Marie, herself, could scarcely have told why she was so bubbling over with gladness.  When she left the tenement home of the Volskys she had been exceedingly depressed, when she parted from Bennie at the Settlement House steps she had been ready to cry.  But the hours between that parting and dinnertime had brought her a sort of assurance, a sort of joyous bravery.  She felt that at last she had found her true vocation, her real place in the sun.  The Volsky family presented to her a very genuine challenge.

She glanced, covertly, at the Young Doctor.  He was eating soup, and no man is at his best while eating soup.  And yet as she watched him, she considered very seriously whether she should tell him of her adventure.  His skill might, perhaps, find some way out for Lily, who had not been born a mute, who had come into the world with seeing eyes.  Bennie had told her that the child’s condition was the result of an illness.  Perhaps the Young Doctor might be able to effect at least a partial cure.  Perhaps it was selfish of her—­utterly, absurdly selfish, to keep the situation to herself.

The Superintendent’s voice broke, sharply, into her reverie.  It was a pleasant voice, and yet Rose-Marie found herself resenting its questioning tone.

“Did you have a pleasant afternoon, dear?” the Superintendent was asking.  “I noticed that you were out for a long while, alone!”

“Why, yes,” Rose-Marie faltered, as she spoke, and, to her annoyance, she could feel the red wave of a blush creeping up over her face (Rose-Marie had never learned to control her blushes).  “Why, yes, I had a very delightful afternoon!”

The Young Doctor, glancing up from his soup, felt a sudden desire to tease.  Rose-Marie, with her cheeks all flushed, made a startlingly colourful, extremely young picture.

“You’re blushing!” he told her accusingly.  “You’re blushing!”

Rose-Marie, feeling the blushes creep still higher, knew a rude impulse to slap the Young Doctor.  All of her desire to confide in him died away, as suddenly as it had been born.  He was the man who had said that the people who lived in poverty are soulless.  He would scoff at the Volskys, and at her desire to help them.  Worse than that—­he might keep her from seeing the Volskys again.  And, in keeping her from seeing them, he would also keep her from making Bennie into a real, wholesome boy—­he would keep her from showing Ella the dangers of the precipice that she was skirting.  Of course, he might help Lily.  But, Rose-Marie told herself that perhaps even Lily—­golden-haired, angelic little Lily—­might seem soulless to him.

“I’m not blushing, Dr. Blanchard,” she said shortly, and could have bitten her tongue for saying it.

The Young Doctor laughed with a boyish vigour.

“I thought,” he said annoyingly, “that you were a Christian, Miss Rose-Marie Thompson!”

Rose-Marie felt a tide of quite definite anger rising in her heart.