“I can’t stay. I shouldn’t have come. It is the sort of thing that a barmaid, a shop girl--someone a little reckless--would do. I am different.” She stretched her hand and directed it haughtily toward the letters. “I am not like these others. But it was a temptation: such a rest, such a certainty for the future. And ... it was half a joke, too.” Jethro put out his immense brown hand and gripped her by the forefinger and thumb round the wrist. She looked fully at him for the first time, and, in spite of herself, she liked his face. It was handsome. The thin high nose and beautifully curved lips made it even aristocratic. She was a shallow town product, and had a flimsy horror of anything that she considered coarse. Yet she admitted that on this man’s face was no touch of boorishness. He looked, so she thought, like a patrician who was masquerading in queer clothes. Her idea of masculine raiment was confined to black cloth, with tweeds for the seaside and flannel for tennis. “I like you,” he said simply. “You are a nice-minded girl. It was a joke with me, too--half a joke. I did it on market day; a fellow gets a bit jolly then, perhaps. I shouldn’t have gone any further with these.” He touched the letters with his free hand, and the touch was enough to scatter them rudely on the floor. “But your name took my fancy. PAMELA CRISP! Now, my mother was a Crisp.” “Yes, so you told me in your letter,” she said faintly, and gently fluttering her white, veined wrist in its handcuff. “You told me to write and tell Miss Toat that we were cousins--on the mother’s side. I did it--as a joke. Oh! a joke--you believe me?” “Of course--a joke. It is nothing more--not yet.” His clear, blue eyes were on her pastel-like face. Then he added ponderingly: “But we may be cousins, after all. It wouldn’t make any difference--in the end. You understand?” She showed how fully she understood by the quick wave of color on her cheek. “My mother’s name was Lilith,” he went on. “The name of my little sister who died.” “My mother had a brother who ran away--some boy’s scrape at home. He was never heard of afterward. His name was John.” “My father’s name.” She became suddenly confidential. “He was a contractor; plenty of money while he lived. We had a house a little way out of London. He drove to his office every day. Two servants, a governess for me, a dinner party now and then. When I grew up, a little shopping, a little housework in an elegant way--arranging flowers, setting the maids by the ears. You know. Thousands of girls live like that and are bored to death. He died bankrupt; mother died of a broken heart, or broken fortunes, poor dear. I was thrown on the world--the creditors took everything. That is five years ago.” He had been listening attentively, watching every shade and shine upon her face, admiring her vivacious, half tragic gestures--not understanding her in the least. The genteel life she so scornfully sketched was unknown to him.