"Could you and your father and brother regard me as a guest--as a friend visiting the family?" "Why?" "Because," he said, "I'm the same kind of a man that you are a girl and that your brother is a boy. Why, you know it, don't you? I know it. I knew it as soon as I heard you speak, and when your brother came into the room that first night with his Latin book, and when I saw your mother's picture. So I know what your father must be. Am I not right?" She lifted her proud little head and looked at him. "We are what you think us," she said. "Then let us stand in that relation, Miss Herold. Will you?" She looked at him, perplexed, gray eyes clear and thoughtful. "Do you mean that you really want me for a friend?" she asked calmly, but her sensitive lip quivered a little. "Yes." "Do men make personal friends among their employees? Do they? I ask because I don't know." "What was your father before he came here?" he inquired bluntly. She looked up, startled, then the color came slowly back to her cheeks. "Isn't that a little impertinent, Mr. Marche?" "Good heavens! Yes, of course it is!" he exclaimed, turning very red. "Will you forgive me? I didn't mean to be rude or anything like it! I merely meant that whatever reverses have happened to bring such a girl as you down into this God-forsaken place have not altered what you were and what you are. _Can_ you forgive me?" "Yes. I'll tell you something. I _wanted_ to be a little more significant to you than merely a paid guide. So did Jim. We--it is rather lonely for us. You are the first real man who has come into our lives in five years. Do you understand, Mr. Marche?" "Of course I do." "Are you sure you do? We would like to feel that we could talk to you--Jim would. It is pleasant to hear a man from the real world speaking. Not that the people here are unkind, only"--she looked up at him almost wistfully--"we _are_ like you, Mr. Marche--and we feel starved, sometimes." He did not trust himself to speak, even to look at her, just at the moment. Not heretofore sentimental, but always impressionable, he was young enough to understand, wise enough not to misunderstand. After a while, leaning back in the blind, he began, almost casually, talking about things in that Northern world which had once been hers, assuming their common interest in matters purely local, in details, of metropolitan affairs, in the changing physiognomy of the monstrous city, its superficial aspects, its complex phases. Timidly, at first, she ventured a question now and then, and after a while, as her reserve melted, she asked more boldly, and even offered her own comments on men and things, so that, for the first time, he had a glimpse of her mind at work--brief, charming surprises, momentary views of a young girl's eager intelligence, visions of her sad and solitary self, more guessed at than revealed in anything she said or left unsaid.