"I could hear that they were drinking," she answered. "I knew that, and therefore I thought that you should go to them." "And run the risk?" "Well, you are a man," she answered coolly. At that I stood so taken aback--for she spoke it with meaning and a sort of sting--that for a minute I did not answer her. Then, "Is not a man's life as much to him, as a woman's is to her?" I said with indignation. "A man's!" she replied. "Aye, but not a mouse's! I will tell you what, Mr. Taylor, or Mr. Price, or whatever your name is----" "Call me what you like!" I said. "Only let me go!" "Then I will call you Mr. Craven!" she retorted bitterly. "Or Mr. Daw in Peacock's feathers. And let you go. Go, go, you coward! Go, you craven!" It was not the most gracious permission, and stung me; but I took it sullenly, and getting away from her went down the passage towards the Strand, leaving her there; not gladly, although to go had been all I had asked a moment before. No man, indeed, could have more firmly resolved to wrench himself from the grasp of the gang whose tool this little spitfire was; nor to a man bred to peaceful pursuits (as I had been) and flung into such an imbroglio as this--wherein to dance on nothing seemed to be the alternative whichever way I looked--was it a matter of so much consequence to be called coward by a child, that I must hesitate for that. Add to this, that the place and time, a dingy passage on a dark night with rain falling and a chill wind blowing, and none abroad but such as honest men would avoid, were not incentives to rashness or adventure. And yet--and yet when it came to going, _nullis vestigiis retrorsum_, as the Latins say, I proved to be either too much or too little of a man, these arguments notwithstanding; too little of a man to weigh reason justly against pride, or too much of a man to hear with philosophy a girl's taunt. When I had gone fifty yards, therefore, I halted; and then in a moment, went back. Not slowly, however, but in a gust of irritation; so that for a very little I could have struck the girl for the puling face and helplessness that gave her an advantage over me. I found her in the same place, and asked her roughly what she wanted. "A man," she said. "Well," I answered sullenly, "what is it?" "Have I found one? that is the question," she retorted keenly. And at that again, I could have had it in my heart to strike her across her scornful face. "My uncle is at least a man." "He is a bad one, curse him!" I cried in a fury. She looked at me coolly. "That is better," she said. "If your deeds were of a piece with your words you would be no man's slave. His least of all, Mr. Price!" "You talk finely," I said, my passion cooling, as I began to read a covert meaning in her tone and words, and that she would be at something. "It comes well from you, who do his errands day and night!" "Or find someone to do them," she answered with derision.