"How do you know that I understand my father? Why have you changed your opinion?" said Lesley, coldly. "You have nothing to go upon--just as in the other case you had nothing to go upon. You rushed to one conclusion, if you will excuse me for saying so, and now you rush to another--with no better reason." "You are very severe, Miss Brooke," said Maurice. "But you are perfectly right, and I must not complain. Only--if I may make a representation----" "Oh, certainly!" "----I might point out that when I spoke to you first you had not read your father's book, you had not, I believe, even heard of it; that you knew nothing about the Macclesfield Club, and that when I spoke to you about his work amongst the poor you were very much inclined to murmur, 'Can any good come out of Nazareth?'" "Mr. Kenyon----" "I beg your pardon, Miss Brooke, but isn't that substantially true? If you can honestly say that it is a misapprehension on my part, I won't say another word. But isn't it all true?" He turned his eager face and bright blue eyes towards her, and read in her pale, troubled face a little of the conflict that was going on between her candor and her pride. "Now, what will she say?" he thought, with what would have seemed to Lesley incomprehensible anxiety. "On her answer depends my opinion of her, now and for ever." And this appeared to Maurice quite an important matter, though possibly Lesley might not have thought it so. She turned to him at last with a frank, decisive gesture. "It _is_ true," she said. "I knew nothing about his books or his works, and so how could I appreciate them? I had never heard of 'The Unexplored' before. You are right, and I had no business to be so angry. But how do you know that I am different now?" "Oh, I know you are," said Maurice, confidently. "You have come to the club for one thing, you see; and you sang to the people and looked at them--well, as if you cared. And you have read 'The Unexplored' _now_?" "Yes. I have," said Lesley, hesitatingly. "And you like it?" "Yes--I like it." The girl looked away, and went on nervously, hesitatingly. "It is very well done," she said, "It is very clever." "Oh, if that is all you can find to say about it!" "But isn't it a great deal?--Mr. Kenyon, I don't know what to say about it. You see I can't be sure whether it is all--true." "True? The story? But, of course----" "Of course the _story_ is not true. I am not such a goose as that. But is the meaning of it true? the moral, so to speak? Is there so much wickedness in the world as my father says? So much vice and wealth and selfishness on the one side: so much misery and poverty and crime on the other? You are a doctor, and you must have seen a great deal of London life: you ought to know. Is it an exaggeration, or is it true?"