“To earning £2 or £3 a week and working all day to earn it,” she finished for him; “to living my life in one little room on a top floor in Bloomsbury, waiting my turn every morning for my bath. To being made love to by the assistant manager and sacrificing my immortal soul for a half-a-crown dinner and a bottle of red wine! It is funny, isn’t it! I have had the experience for professional purposes and I don’t like it a bit, Mike.” She looked at him straight in the eyes. She had dropped her air of flippancy, her slang; the voice that spoke was not to be distinguished from that of any other gentlewoman. “You see, a woman is differently circumstanced to a man. She wants nice things and her attitude toward life, and indeed the whole of her conduct, depends entirely upon the degree of niceness she requires. Men don’t do things for women for nothing. They lend to their men friends all the money in the world and are grateful if they get it back. They expect nothing more than their money and are surprised when they get it. But if I were a typist in a city office and I borrowed £2 from the assistant manager or from the chief bookkeeper or a fiver from one of the partners, why, Mike, I should be booked for supper on Wednesday. Men want more from women than a _quid pro quo_; they want two _quid pro quo_. In return for the £2 I borrowed, I should pay interest well outside the range of the multiplication table. Suppose a man lent you £2 and asked you in exchange, not only to repay the money, but to renounce all your dearest principles for the sake of the loan; if he asked you to betray your friends, where you had been loyal to them, and lie, where you had been truthful; break your word where you had been faithful, be a thief where you had been honest? Would you surrender every reticence, every honourable instinct, every precious faith?” Mike said nothing. For there was nothing to say. He paid the bill and escorted the girl to a cab. “I am not going to be sorry for you,” he said; “you are having The Life. One of these days I shall come along and take you; but I shall hate it. Hop in, Kate!” Kate literally hopped into the waiting taxi, waved her hand in farewell and was gone. Michael Pretherston stood for fully five minutes on the edge of the pavement, meditating upon what the girl had said. She had struck a responsive note in his soul, for she spoke no more than was the truth, as he knew. He went, a little sadly, back to headquarters, remembering en route that he had forgotten to write the report. Should he go back to the Yard and compose it from memory or should he return to the unsympathetic atmosphere of Felton House? He decided upon the latter and surprised Lord Flanborough in the act of taking an afternoon nap. Michael was full of apologies and was so unusually respectful that his lordship forgot to be annoyed. “Moya’s out,” he explained.