"I beg your pardon," I said--and indeed I had hardly heard what he had been saying, for I was thinking: Here--walking along the street with me--John Ember, John Ember, _John Ember_! "I'm saying," he observed, "that I discharge you from to-night." "Look here, Mr. Ember," I said, "you can't discharge me--don't you understand! I've made up my mind to stay with you." "Oh!" he exclaimed. "So you've made up your mind?" "You mustn't be so selfish," I explained it. "You must think a little of me. Here you are, doing a big, fine work, work that interests me more than anything in the world. I've no other chance to help on, except through you and Rose. Why do you want to drive me out?" "But, my child," he said, "if you don't mind the practicality of the question, what are you living on?" "Oh, that!" I said. "I pay my way by making Mrs. Bingy's lace." He was silent for a moment. "You really want to?" he asked. "It isn't pity?" "I really want to," I told him. "That's why I'm going to!" He drew a deep breath. "Then that's settled," he said; "I own up to you. I didn't know how on earth I was going to get on without you!" CHAPTER XVI So there went on that relation for which this age has no name of its own: the relation of the man, as worker, and the "out-family" woman who is his helper. It is a new thing, for a new day. There has never been a time when its need was not recognized; but usually, if this need was filled at all, it had to be filled clandestinely. It used to be the courtezans who had the brains, or, at any rate, who used them. The "protected" woman, sunk in domestic drudgery, or in fashion and folly, or exquisitely absorbed in the rearing of her children, could not often share in her husband's work. And, too, in the new order, she is not necessary to share in her husband's work, for she is to have work of her own, sometimes like his and sometimes quite other. The function of the "out-family" woman is clearly defined. And the relationship will be nothing that the wife of the future will fear. It happened that I loved this man to whom I assumed the relationship of helper, and that I had loved him before I began to share his work. But it is true that, as the days went on, I began to dwell more on our work and less on my loving him. It was not that I loved him less. As I worked near him, and came to know him better, mind and heart, I loved him more but there was no time to think about that! All day we worked at his proof, his lectures, his correspondence with men and women, bent, as he was bent, on great issues. Gradually our hours of work lengthened, began earlier, lasted into the dusk; and I had the sense of definite service to a great end. Most of all I had this when I answered the letters from the workers themselves, for then it seemed to me that I went close to the moving of great tides.