'Miss Brewster,' cried the young man earnestly, leaning over the table towards her, 'why don't you abandon your horrible inquisitorial profession, and put your undoubted talents to some other use?'
'What, for instance?'
'Oh, anything.'
Jennie rested her fair cheek against her open palm again, and looked at the dingy window. There was a long silence between them—Wentworth absorbed in watching her clear-cut profile and her white throat, his breath quickening as he feasted his eyes on her beauty.
'I have always got angry,' she said at last, in a low voice with the quiver of a suppressed sigh in it, 'when other people have said that to me—I wonder why it is I merely feel hurt and sad when you say it? It is so easy to say, "Oh, anything"—so easy, so easy. You are a man, with the strength and determination of a man, yet you have met with disappointments and obstacles that have required all your courage to overcome. Every man has, and with most men it is a fight until the head is gray, and the brain weary with the ceaseless struggle. The world is utterly merciless; it will trample you down relentlessly if it can, and if your vigilance relaxes for a moment, it will steal your crust and leave you to starve. Every time I think of this incessant sullen contest, with no quarter given or taken, I shudder, and pray that I may die before I am at the mercy of the pitiless world. When I came to London, I saw, for the first time in my life, that hopeless, melancholy promenade of the sandwich-men; human wreckage drifting along the edge of the street, as if cast there by the rushing tide sweeping past them. They—they seemed to me like a tottering procession of the dead; and on their backs was the announcement of a play that was making all London roar with laughter. The awful comedy and tragedy of it! Well, I simply couldn't stand it. I had to run up a side-street and cry like the little fool I was, right in broad daylight.'
Jennie paused and tried to laugh, but the effort ended in a sound suspiciously like a sob. She dashed her hand with quick impatience across her eyes, from which Wentworth had never taken his own, seeing them become dim, as if the light from the window proved too strong for them, and finally fill as she ceased to speak. Searching ineffectually about her dress for a handkerchief, which lay on the table beside her parasol unnoticed by either, Jennie went on with some difficulty:
'Well, these poor forlorn creatures were once men—men who have gone down—and if the world is so hard on a man with all his strength and resourcefulness, think—think what it is for a woman thrown into this inhuman turmoil—a woman without friends—without money—flung among these relentless wolves—to live if she can—or—to die—if she can.'
The girl's voice broke, and she buried her face in her arms, which rested on the table.
Wentworth sprang to his feet and came round to where she sat.
'Jennie,' he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. The girl, without looking up, shook off the hand that touched her.