A kind of panic seized me. I wanted to say, “Oh, it is Sylvia Castleman!” But then, how could I explain? I couldn’t say, “I have your picture in my room, cut out of a newspaper.” Still less could I say, “I know a friend of your husband.” Fortunately Sylvia did not heed my excitement. (She had learned by this time to pretend not to notice.) “Please don’t misunderstand me,” she was saying. “I really _don’t_ know about these things. And I would do something to help if I could.” As she said this she looked with the red-brown eyes straight into mine--a gaze so clear and frank and honest, it was as if an angel had come suddenly to earth, and learned of the horrible tangle into which we mortals have got our affairs. “Be careful what you’re saying,” put in our hostess, with a laugh. “You’re in dangerous hands.” But Sylvia would not be warned. “I want to know more about it,” she said. “You must tell me what I can do.” “Take her at her word,” said Mrs. Allison, to me. “Strike while the iron is hot!” I detected a note of triumph in her voice; if she could say that she had got Mrs. van Tuiver to take up child-labour--that indeed would be a feather to wear! “I will tell you all I can,” I said. “That’s my work in the world.” “Take Mrs. Abbott away with you,” said the energetic hostess, to Sylvia; and before I quite understood what was happening, I had received and accepted an invitation to drive in the park with Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver. In her role of _dea ex machina_ the hostess extricated me from the other guests, and soon I was established in a big new motor, gliding up Madison Avenue as swiftly and silently as a cloud-shadow over the fields. As I write the words there lies upon my table a Socialist paper with one of Will Dyson’s vivid cartoons, representing two ladies of the great world at a reception. Says the first, “These social movements are becoming _quite_ worth while!” “Yes, indeed,” says the other. “One meets such good society!” 7. Sylvia’s part in this adventure was a nobler one than mine, Seated as I was in a regal motor-car, and in company with one favoured of all the gods in the world, I must have had an intense conviction of my own saintliness not to distrust my excitement. But Sylvia, for her part, had nothing to get from me but pain. I talked of the factory-fires and the horrors of the sugar-refineries, and I saw shadow after shadow of suffering cross her face. You may say it was cruel of me to tear the veil from those lovely eyes, but in such a matter I felt myself the angel of the Lord and His vengeance.