"I was sitting here, looking at you," he said, bluntly. "I was thinking how fine you are in every way; how there is as much difference in the texture of men and women as there is in the texture of their clothes. From that automobile cap you wear to your slippers and stockings, you are clad in silk. From your brain to the tone of your voice, you are woven of human silk. I've learned lately that silk isn't weak, but strong. They make the best balloons of it." He paused and laughed, but his face again became sober. "I was thinking, too, of your mother. She must be sixty, but she's a young woman. Her face is smooth and unwrinkled, and her heart is still in bloom. At that same age, George won't be much older than he is now." The compliment was so obviously not intended as compliment at all that the girl flushed with pleasure. "Then," went on Samson, his face slowly drawing with pain, "I was thinking of my own people. My mother was about forty when she died. She was an old woman. My father was forty-three. He was an old man. I was thinking how they withered under their drudgery--and of the monstrous injustice of it all." Adrienne Lescott nodded. Her eyes were sweetly sympathetic. "It's the hardship of the conditions," she said, softly. "Those conditions will change." "But that's not all I was thinking," went on the boy. "I was watching you lift your coffee-cup awhile ago. You did it unconsciously, but your movement was dainty and graceful, as though an artist had posed you. That takes generations, and, in my imagination, I saw my people sitting around an oil-cloth on a kitchen table, pouring coffee into their saucers." "'There are five and twenty ways "'Of writing tribal lays,'" quoted the girl, smilingly, "'And every single one of them is right.'" "And a horrible thought came to me," continued Samson. He took out his handkerchief, and mopped his forehead, then tossed back the long lock that fell over it. "I wondered"--he paused, and then went on with a set face--"I wondered if I were growing ashamed of my people." "If I thought that," said Miss Lescott, quietly, "I wouldn't have much use for you. But I know there's no danger." "If I thought there was," Samson assured her, "I would go back there to Misery, and shoot myself to death.... And, yet, the thought came to me." "I'm not afraid of your being a cad," she repeated. "And yet," he smiled, "I was trying to imagine you among my people. What was that rhyme you used to quote to me when you began to teach me manners?" She laughed, and fell into nonsense quotation, as she thrummed lightly on the table-cloth with her slim fingers. "'The goops they lick their fingers, "'The goops eat with their knives, "'They spill their broth on the table-cloth, "'And lead disgusting lives.'"