"You have not lost her love--she is always wanting to come to you. But I really----" he hesitated, seeking a word. "You think I am not good enough to associate with Alice--that I should contaminate her if she came here----" "Not good enough? Contaminate her?" Sinclair cried excitedly. "Oh, if you knew what I think of you, how I esteem and admire you!" "Hush! hush! please," said Doris. "You are speaking excitedly--you do not consider what you say. The fact remains that you think my work altogether wrong. ’A crime,’ you have called it, ’in the sight of God and man.’ And you have forbidden your sister to come here. That shows you have not changed your opinion." "I have forbidden my sister to come here lest she should have a relapse into her former views, and insist upon joining you again at the business." "You would not allow her?" "Most certainly I should not allow her." His tone was emphatic. "Then you still think it wrong of me to do it, in spite of what I have said?" "I think you are mistaken. I am sure you would not knowingly do wrong." After he had gone, for he went soon afterwards, not being able to trust himself to stay there any longer, Doris sat a long time thinking over what had passed. His evident admiration and indeed love for herself--which she had discouraged, because if she belonged to any one it was to Bernard--only heightened the effect of the uncompromising way in which he regarded her employment. It was, then, in the eyes of an honest man a fraud which even the exigency of her need of money wherewith to pay Bernard his own again could by no means exonerate. "It certainly is wrong to do evil that good may come," she said to herself. "And oh! my heart tells me that I have known in its depths for a long time, in spite of what Bernard said, and in spite of my sheltering behind his opinion, that mine is very questionable work, leading, as I fear it often does, to poor and ignorant people giving their money for what is of no real value. If the shops would sell my pictures for a few shillings it would not be so bad; but though the dealers only give me a few shillings for each, they sell many of them for as much as a pound or thirty shillings each. I should not like any one I loved to pay such a price for them--and it isn’t fair to cheat other people’s loved ones. Every one is the loved one of the Lover of mankind," was the next thought, "and He said, ’Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.’" The solemnity of the thought was great. "Unto Him!" she murmured. "Do I treat Him like that? Can I possibly do it to Him?" She thought over the essential points of her religion; over what He had done for her, and then asked herself how could she make Him such a return?