"That's just what I was meaning to show to-night when I said what I did to the club, of the financial dependence of women; it is their destruction; it destroys their self-respect; it forces them to accept a moral companionship which they'd scorn if they dared; it forces them to seem to condone and uphold such things themselves; it forces them to be the companions and subordinates of degraded moral natures, that hold wives and daughters to a code which they will not apply to themselves, and which they seek to make void for other wives and daughters; it--" "You told me to go home," she said, stubbornly. "I'm not goin'! I make money enough to live on. I always spent it on--on things to wear; but--but I can live on it, an' I'm goin' to. I ain't goin' to live in the house with no such a man. He ain't _fit_ to live with. I won't tell ma an' the girls--yet; not till--" She paused, and peered toward the clock in the face of the great stone building across the street. "Do you think it's too late fer me t' talk a minute with Miss Gertrude?" she asked, with her direct gaze, again. "She'd let me stay there one night, I guess, n' she'd tell me--I c'd talk to her some." "If you won't go home," he said, slowly, "I suppose it would be best for you to go there, but--it is rather late. Go home for to-night, Miss Francis! I wish you would. Think it over to-night, please. Let me take you home to-night. Go to Miss Gertrude to-morrow, and talk it over." His tone had grown gentle and more tender than he knew. He took the hand she had placed on his arm in his own, and tried to turn toward her street. She held stubbornly back. "For my sake, to please me--because I think it is best--won't you go home to-night?" She looked at him again, and a haze came in her eyes. She did not trust herself to speak, but she turned toward her own street, and they walked silently down the square. His hand still held her own as it lay on his arm. "Thank you," he said, and pressed her fingers more firmly for an instant and then released them. He had taken his glove off in the hall and had not replaced it. When they reached the door of her father's house, she suddenly grasped his ungloved hand and kissed it, and ran sobbing up the steps and into the house without a word. "Poor girl," thought Avery, "she is not herself to-night. She has never respected nor loved her father much, but this was a phase of his nature she had not suspected before. Poor child! I hope Gertrude--" and in the selfishness of the love he bore for Gertrude, he allowed his thoughts to wander, and it did not enter his mind to place anything deeper than a mere emotional significance upon the conduct of the intense, tall, dark-eyed girl who had just left him.