"But do they choose?" asked Faith, who had become interested in spite, of herself. "Are they not driven this way or that, according to their opportunities? In my case there was no choice. I had tried everything else. Hard as it is, I am thankful for my present employment."
The man looked at her sharply. There was genuine sympathy in his face. Almost involuntarily he broke out in violent sentences.
"You girls are to blame in great measure for all this, and where the fault is not yours it lies with your parents! Instead of cultivating your graces you bedraggle them with labor! Instead of marketing your smiles you trade in blood and sinew! Every day in that store means a year off of your life; every anxious moment means an inroad into your rightful happiness! Why will you not see the folly of your ways? Why can you not understand that it is a false morality which is killing you? Why, if I were a girl"—his voice had dropped to the most persuasive cadence—"I should value my beauty too highly to hide it behind a counter, and my subsistence should be the boundless reward of affection, rather than the niggardly recompense for wasted tissues! Of course, I shock you, because you have done no thinking for yourself. A lot of narrow souled ancestors have done thinking for you. They have brought you here to let you shift for yourself, but woe to you if you offend one of their petty notions of honor. See, child! I have money, I have constant ease. Could you blame me for offering to share it with youth and beauty?"
As he breathed these words he gazed at Faith eagerly. The soul in the man had vanished. He was dangerously in earnest.
The thrill that flowed through Faith's veins as he spoke was not of fear, for, child that she was, she understood his meaning, and his words stirred the deepest channels of her soul—she was more grieved than shocked at the man's distorted reasoning.
"You are all wrong," she said, sadly. "You cannot understand! There are some things more precious than gold to us, more precious even than comfort or affection. Not for the world would I lose this 'something' which I possess! It is the haven of my soul at the hour of every trial. It is the one solace of my life in the desperate condition that I have reached. You, a man of years, should not argue so wrongfully. It is wicked to place temptations before the young and wretched."
She had regained her composure as she finished speaking, and a tinge of righteous indignation made her voice vibrate strangely.
"Is it wrong to do good?" asked the man, a trifle sullenly. "Surely comfort, ease, health are the best a man can offer. Nature did not create you girls for a life of toil. You were made for love, for homage and adoration. Yet when one offers you these you turn to your nameless 'something' and, like the martyrs of old, suffer torture and death rather than accept what is your due. It is incomprehensible, truly!"
"Hush! Your words are an insult! I will not hear them. It is true that my knowledge of the world is limited, but this much I know: the God of righteousness has placed me here for a purpose, and that purpose is not to play the coward in time of trouble or to prove traitor to the highest, holiest instincts which permeate my being! Working girl I am and may always be, but my lot is a queen's beside what you suggest! God pity the poor women who have not the wisdom to see it."
She was standing before him now like a beautiful statue, one arm uplifted to emphasize her utterances.