"Go on," said he, as she hesitated.
"I'm afraid you'll misunderstand."
"What does it matter, if I do?"
"Well—you've acted toward me as if I were a mere machine that you were experimenting with."
"And so you are."
"I understand that. But when you offered to help me, if I happened to want to do something different from what you want me to do, it made me feel that you thought of me as a human being, too."
The expression of his unseeing eyes puzzled her. She became much embarrassed when he said, "Are you dissatisfied with Spenser? Do you want to change lovers? Are you revolving me as a possibility?"
"I haven't forgotten what you said," she protested.
"But a few words from me wouldn't change you from a woman into a sexless ambition."
An expression of wistful sadness crept into the violet-gray eyes, in contrast to the bravely smiling lips. She was thinking of her birth that had condemned her to that farmer Ferguson, full as much as of the life of the streets, when she said: