"Well. To begin with, a sweet and pure character, which in some amazing way has formed itself in this rotten environment--a wonderfully delicate sort of a flower blossoming in the muck heap. The kind of a sensitive plant that the slightest rude touch would blight. It's a marvel how it has escaped being trod upon--there are so many careless feet! I'm not proud of myself as I am, but I hate to think of what I'd be like if I'd been born in her cradle. It is always a marvel to me when some child of the slum wants to be good. From where in all this sordidness did she get the inspiration? And then it is always interesting to me--sad and interesting--to see how utterly stupid this desire for goodness is--how it is just as likely to lead to utter damnation as anywhere else. This Yetta Rayefsky has a beautiful and quite absurd trust in people. On a very short acquaintance she trusts you completely. I think she trusts me too--just exactly as she trusted that Cadet. And the faith she put in him was just as beautiful as what she has given you." "Walter, a person who looked at you would never dream that you're such a--" "Sentimentalist? I suppose you're going to call me that again." Longman said it bitterly. And she, knowing how the taunt would sting him, with equal bitterness did not reply. They trudged on side by side in silence, across town to Broadway and up that deserted thoroughfare towards Washington Square. They were neither of them happy. In the bottom of her heart Mabel Train knew that something had been neglected by those fairies who had equipped her for life. They had showered very many talents upon her. But they had forgotten that little knot of nerve cells which had to do with the deeper affections. There were heights and depths of life which she knew she would never visit. It made her feel unpleasantly different. And Longman, whom otherwise she liked very much, was always reminding her of this deficiency. It seemed to her that he was mocking her cold intellectualism. And being supersensitive on this point, she had hurled "sentimentalist" in his face. Of all the odd types in New York City, Walter Longman was one of the most bizarre. His parents had died while he was in Harvard. They had left him an income of about five thousand a year. He did not make a brilliant record in the University. There were nearly always one or two conditions hanging over his head, but a marked talent for languages and a vital interest in philosophy carried him through. He was not popular with the students because in spite of his immense body he could not muster sufficient interest in football to join the "squad." He preferred to sit in his window-seat and read.