She seated herself easily in the chair to which she was accustomed. She began drawing the pins out of her hat, as a woman does when she feels at home. When the hat was free of her heaps of brown-red hair, she threw it carelessly upon the table, shook her head and lifted the hair from her forehead with her fingers. And John stood by with a smile, thinking how the faintest shadow of a word of question would make that hat fly back on to the head of brown-red hair, the hat-pins pierce the crown with hasty pride, and the little purse that lay upon the table alongside of them be clutched in an eager, scornful hand, as she would rise, full of dignity, to depart. He let the smile fade away, and repeated his question. "Yes," she said. "I thought when you didn’t answer at once that you weren’t very keen to see me." "And if I said I wasn’t very keen, would you go at once?" Her eyebrows lifted high. She made a movement in her chair. One hand was already beginning to stretch out for the grey velvet hat. "Like a shot!" she answered. He nodded his head. "That’s what I thought," said John. She rose quickly to her feet. "If you want me to go, why don’t you say so?" He put his hands on her shoulders and seated her gently back again in the chair. "But I don’t want you to go," he replied. "I’ve got a lot of things I want to say to you." "If you’re going to talk evolution----" she began. He laughed. "It’s something very like it," said he. She gave a sigh of resignation, took out a packet of cigarettes, extracted one, lit it and inhaled the first breath deep--deep into her lungs. "Well, go on," she said. "Have you got plenty of cigarettes?" "Yes, plenty to-day." "Hadn’t you yesterday?" "No, Mother and I raked up all the cigarette ends out of the fireplaces, and I just had a penny for a packet of cigarette papers." She laughed. This is the honesty of poverty. She would take no money from any man. For just as the virtue of wealth will bring out the evil of avarice, so will the evil of poverty bring out the virtue of self-respect. In this world, there is as much good that comes out of evil as ever stands by itself alone. This, in fact, is the need of evil, that out of it may lift the good. "Well, what have you got to say?" she continued. "Get it over as quick as you can. I shan’t understand half of it." "You’ll understand it all," said John. "You may not admit it. You don’t admit your own honesty--you probably won’t admit mine." She screwed up her eyes at him. He said the most incomprehensible things. Of course, he was a crank. She knew that--took it for granted--but what did he mean by her honesty? "I don’t steal," she said. "But I owe fifteen pounds to my dressmaker, and thirteen to Derry & Toms, and six somewhere else, and I don’t suppose they’ll ever get paid. Do you call that honest?"