She drew her hand away. “You do not need to know.”
“Perhaps not,” said he. “But I wish to.”
“Well—I am one of a thousand girls”—there came a flush into her face and a ring into her voice—“ten thousand girls, yes, a hundred thousand! who are doing the same work.”
“Yes, I know now that you are a revolutionist. But who are you personally?”
“Any one of the hundred thousand.”
“But you are not just any one,” he persisted. “That’s plain. You are educated, refined, have had advantages far above the ordinary.”
“Do you not know,”—and her voice swelled with a more vibrant ring—“that our universities are filled with poor, obscure young women—poor, yet great souls just the same! who starve themselves, literally starve themselves, that they may gain an education, that they may become broad, cultured women? And do this that they may bring light and help and hope to their down-trodden people?”
But Drexel was seeing her as she appeared upon the train. “That may be so; but you are not of that kind,” he said confidently. “That kind does not look as you did last night.”
“But how do you know,” she cried, stretching wide her arms the better to display her clumsy garments, “that last night’s clothes are any truer index of my station than to-night’s?”
She saw the question struck home. “We revolutionists work in hourly danger from the police. Safety compels us to assume disguises, and we fit our disguises to our missions. My mission of yesterday required that I should seem what you call a lady.”