When they reached the street door she turned to him with wide eyes. "Great God," she moaned, "and people go to church and pray and thank God--and collect rent from such as they! Men offer premiums to mothers and fathers for large families of children--to be brought up like that? In a world where that is possible! Oh, I think it is wicked, wicked, wicked, to allow it--any of it--all of it! How can you?" John Martin looked hopeless and helpless. "I don't," he said, in pathetic self-defense, feeling somehow that the blame was personal. "Oh, I don't mean you!" she exclaimed, almost impatiently. "I mean all who know it--who have known and understood it all along. How could men allow it? How dared they? And to think of encouraging such people to marry--to bring into a life like that such swarms of helpless children. Oh, the sin and shame and outrage of it!" John Martin was dazed that she should look upon it as she did. He was surprised that she spoke so openly. He did not fully comprehend the power and force of real conviction and feeling overtaken in a sincere and fearlessly frank nature by such a knowledge for the first time. "I should not have brought you here," he said, feebly, as they entered the waiting carriage which her mother had insisted she should take if she would go "slumming," as she had expressed it. She turned an indignant face upon him. "Why?" she demanded. He tried to say something about a shock to her nerves, and such sights and knowledge being not for women. "I had begun to feel that he respected me--believed in me--wanted, in truth and not merely in name, to share life with me," she thought, "but he does not: it is all a sham. He wants someone who shall _not_ share life with him--not even his mental life." "You would come here with papa, would you not?" she asked, presently. "You would talk over, look at, think of the problems of life with him,"--her voice began to tremble. "Certainly," he said, "but that is different. It--" "Yes, it is different; quite different. You love papa, and it would be a pain to you to keep your mental books locked up from him. You respect papa, and you would not be able to live a life of pretense with him. You--" "Gertrude! Oh, darling! I love you. I love you. You know that," he said, grasp ing both her hands and covering them with kisses. She snatched them away, and covered her face with them to hide the tears which were a surprise and shock to herself. "I should not have taken her there," he thought. "I'm a great fool."