Sunderline stopped.  The color flushed up in his face.  He had spoken faster and freer and longer than he had thought of; the feeling that he had in him about this thing, and the interest he had in Marion Kent, all rushed to words together, so that he almost forgot that Marion Kent in bodily presence stood listening before him, he was dealing so much more with his abstract thought of her, and his notion of real womanhood.

But Marion Kent did stand there.  She flushed up too, when he said, “We are going to lose our wives by it.”  What did he mean?  Would he lose anything, if she took to this that she thought of, and went abroad into the world, and before it?  Why didn’t he say so, then?  Why didn’t he give her the choice?

But what difference need it make, in any such way?  Why shouldn’t a girl be doing her part beforehand, as a man does?  He was getting ahead in his trade, and saving money.  By and by, he would think he had got enough, and then he would ask somebody to be his wife.  What should the wife have been doing in the mean time—­before she was sure that she should ever be a wife?  Why shouldn’t she look out for herself?

She said so.

“I don’t see exactly, Mr. Sunderline.”

She called him “Mr. Sunderline,” though she remembered very well that in the earnestness of his talk he had called her “Marion.”  They had grown to that time of life when a young man and a girl who have known each other always, are apt to drop the familiar Christian name, and not take up anything else if they can help it.  The time when they carefully secure attention before they speak, and then use nothing but pronouns in addressing each other.  A girl, however, says “Mr.” a little more easily than a man says “Miss.”  The girl has always been “Miss” to the world in general; the boy grows up to his manly title, and it is not a special personal matter to give it to him.  There is something, even, in the use of it, which delicately marks an attitude—­not of distance, but of a certain maidenly and bewitching consciousness—­in a girl friend grown into a woman, and recognizing the man.

“I don’t see, exactly, Mr. Sunderline,” said Marion.  “Why shouldn’t a girl do the best she can?  Will she be any the worse for it afterwards?  Why should the wives be all spoilt, any more than the husbands?”

“Real work wouldn’t spoil; only the sham and the show.  Don’t do it, Marion.  I wouldn’t want my sister to, if I had one—­there!”

He had not meant so directly to answer her question.  He came to this end involuntarily.

Marion felt herself tingle from head to foot with the suddenness of the negative that she had asked for and brought down upon herself.  Now, if she acted, she must act in defiance of it.  She felt angrily ashamed, too, of the position in which his words put her; that of a girl seeking notoriety, for mere show’s sake; desiring to do a sham work; to make a pretension without a claim.  How did he know what her claim might be?  She had a mind to find out, and let him see.  Sister! what did he say that for?  He needn’t have talked about sisters, or wives either, after that fashion.  Spoilt!  Well, what should she save herself for?  It was pretty clear it wouldn’t be much to him.