Diana asked if Mr. Barton had himself gone through a great struggle with poverty.

“The usual struggle.  No more than thousands of others.  Only in him it is vocal—­he can reflect upon it.—­You had an easy triumph over him last night,” she added, with a smile, turning to her companion.

“Who wouldn’t have?” cried Diana.  “What outrageous things he said!”

“He doesn’t know much about India—­or the Colonies.  He hasn’t travelled; he reads very little.  He showed badly.  But on his own subjects he is good enough.  I have known him impress or convert the most unlikely people—­by nothing but a bare sincerity.  Just now—­while the servants were handing champagne—­he and I were standing a little way off under the gallery.  His eyes are weak, and he can’t bear the glare of all these lights.  Suddenly he told me the story of his father’s death.”

She paused, and drew her hand across her eyes.  Diana saw that they were wet.  But although startled, the girl held herself a little aloof and erect, as though ready at a moment’s notice to defend herself against a softening which might involve a treachery to glorious and sacred things.

“It so chanced”—­Miss Vincent resumed—­“that it had a bearing on experiences of my own—­just now.”

“You are living in the East End?”

“At present.  I am trying to find out the causes of a great wave of poverty and unemployment in a particular district.”—­She named it.—­“It is hard work—­and not particularly good for the nerves.”

She smiled, but at the same moment she turned extremely white, and as she fell back in her chair, Diana saw her clinch her hand as though in a strong effort for physical self-control.

Diana sprang up.

“Let me get you some water!”

“Don’t go.  Don’t tell anybody.  Just open that window.”  Diana obeyed, and the northwest wind, sweeping in, seemed to revive her pale companion almost at once.

“I am very sorry!” said Miss Vincent, after a few minutes, in her natural voice.  “Now I am all right.”  She drank some water, and looked up.

“Shall I tell you the story he told me?  It is very short, and it might change your view of him.”

“If you feel able—­if you are strong enough,” said Diana, uncomfortably, wondering why it should matter to Miss Vincent or anybody else what view she might happen to take of Mr. Barton.

“He said he remembered his father (who was a house-painter—­a very decent and hard-working man) having been out of work for eight weeks.  He used to go out looking for work every day—­and there was the usual story, of course, of pawning or selling all their possessions—­odd jobs—­increasing starvation—­and so on.  Meanwhile, his only pleasure—­he was ten—­was to go with his sister after school to look at two shops in the East India Dock Road—­one a draper’s with a ’Christmas Bazaar’—­the other a confectioner’s.  He declares it made