"It's about all she gets. And _I_ pay three fifty--and she and I do all the work--and give you two meals and a lunch to take with you--and you've got a room alone--and your mending done. I guess you know when you're well off." "But I ain't well off," he cried. "I'm a grown-up man--and I've got to have a woman." Susan had become used to tenement conditions. She said, practically, "Well--there's your left over four dollars a week." "Huh!" retorted he. "Think I'm goin' to run any risks? I'm no fool. I take care of my health." "Well--don't bother me with your troubles--at least, troubles of that sort." "Yes, but I will!" shouted he, in one of those sudden furies that seize upon the stupid ignorant. "You needn't act so nifty with me. I'm as good as you are. I'm willing to marry you." "No, thanks," said Susan. "I'm not free to marry--even if I would." "Oh--you ain't?" For an instant his curiosity, as she thus laid a hand upon the curtain over her past, distracted his uncertain attention. But her expression, reserved, cold, maddeningly reminding him of a class distinction of which he was as sensitively conscious as she was unconscious--her expression brought him back with a jerk. "Then you'll have to live with me, anyhow. I can't stand it, and I'm not goin' to. If you want me to stay on here, and help out, you've got to treat me right. Other fellows that do as I'm doing get treated right. And I've got to be, too--or I'll clear out." And he squirmed, and waggled his head and slapped and rubbed his heavy, powerful legs. "Why, Ashbel," said Susan, patting him on the shoulder. "You and I are like brother and sister. You might as well talk this way to Etta." He gave her a brazen look, uttered a laugh that was like the flinging out of a bucket of filth. "Why not? Other fellows that have to support the family and can't afford to marry gets took care of." Susan shrank away. But Ashbel did not notice it. "It ain't a question of Etta," he went on. "There's you--and I don't need to look nowhere else." Susan had long since lost power to be shocked by any revelation of the doings of people lashed out of all civilized feelings by the incessant brutal whips of poverty and driven back to the state of nature. She had never happened to hear definitely of this habit--even custom--of incestuous relations; now that she heard, she instantly accepted it as something of which she had really known for some time. At any rate, she had no sense of shock. She felt no horror, no deep disgust, simply the distaste into which her original sense of horror had been thinned down by constant contact with poverty's conditions--just as filth no longer made her shudder, so long as it did not touch her own person. "You'd better go and chase yourself round the square a few times," said she, turning away and taking up some mending. "You see, there ain't no way out of it," pursued he, with an insinuating grin.