“It was Mr. Ditmar.”

“Perhaps it will help you to tell me about it, Janet.”

“I’d—­I’d like to.  I’ve been so unhappy since you told me he was dead —­and I felt like a cheat.  You see, he promised to marry me, and I know now that he loved me, that he really wanted to marry me, but something happened to make me believe he wasn’t going to, I saw—­another girl who’d got into trouble, and then I thought he’d only been playing with me, and I couldn’t stand it.  I joined the strikers—­I just had to do something.”

Augusta Maturity nodded, and waited.

“I was only a stenographer, and we were very poor, and he was rich and lived in a big house, the most important man in Hampton.  It seemed too good to be true—­I suppose I never really thought it could happen.  Please don’t think I’m putting all the blame on him, Mrs. Maturity—­it was my fault just as much as his.  I ought to have gone away from Hampton, but I didn’t have the strength.  And I shouldn’t have—­” Janet stopped.

“But—­you loved him?”

“Yes, I did.  For a long time, after I left him, I thought I didn’t, I thought I hated him, and when I found out what had happened to me—­that night I came to you—­I got my father’s pistol and went to the mill to shoot him.  I was going to shoot myself, too.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Maturity gasped.  She gave a quick glance of sheer amazement at Janet, who did not seem to notice it; who was speaking objectively, apparently with no sense of the drama in her announcement.

“But I couldn’t,” she went on.  “At the time I didn’t know why I couldn’t, but when I went out I understood it was because I wanted the child, because it was his child.  And though he was almost out of his head, he seemed so glad because I’d come back to him, and said he’d marry me right away.”

“And you refused!” exclaimed Mrs. Maturity.

“Well, you see, I was out of my head, too, I still thought I hated him —­but I’d loved him all the time.  It was funny!  He had lots of faults, and he didn’t seem to understand or care much about how poor people feel, though he was kind to them in the mills.  He might have come to understand—­I don’t know—­it wasn’t because he didn’t want to, but because he was so separated from them, I guess, and he was so interested in what he was doing.  He had ambition, he thought everything of that mill, he’d made it.  I don’t know why I loved him, it wasn’t because he was fine, like Mr. Insall, but he was strong and brave, and he needed me and just took me.”

“One never knows!” Augusta Maturity murmured.

“I went back that night to tell him I’d marry him—­and he’d gone.  Then I came to you, to the soup kitchen.  I didn’t mean to bother you, I’ve never quite understood how I got there.  I don’t care so much what happens to me, now that I’ve told you,” Janet added.  “It was mean, not to tell you, but I’d never had anything like this—­what you were giving me—­and I wanted all I could get.”