"I mean," she answered, proud head up-flung, "there were always plenty of men to tell me that--when I was an office scrubwoman. Well?" she demanded fiercely, stung by something in his look, "what did you think I'd been? When a girl is left alone with a baby brother to care for, she can't wait and pick and choose work that is nice and ladylike; she must take what comes along or starve--so I worked. I used to scrub floors and stairs in an office building. I was very young then, and Arthur hardly more than a baby, and it was either that or starvation or--" she flushed painfully, but her blue eyes met his regard unflinchingly; "anyway, I--preferred to be a scrubwoman. So now you know what I mean by your world not being my world, and I--I guess you see how--how impossible it all is." For a long moment was a silence wherein she stood turned from him, her trembling fingers busily folding and refolding a pleat in her apron while he stared down blindly at the floor. "So you preferred the slavery of scrubbing floors, did you, Hermione?" he said at last. "Of course!" she answered, without turning or lifting her heavy head. "And that," said he, his voice as placid, as serenely unhurried as usual, "and that is; just why all things are going to be possible to us--yes, even turning my wasted years to profit. Oh, my Hermione, help me to be worthy of you--teach me what a glorious thing life may be--" "I?" she said wonderingly, her drooping head still averted, "but I am--" "Just the one woman I want to be my own for ever and always, more--far more than I have ever wanted anything in my life." "But," she whispered, "I am only--" "The best, the noblest I have ever known." "But a--scrubwoman!" "With dimples in her elbows, Hermione!" In one stride he was beside her, and she, because of his light tone, must turn at last to glance up at him half-fearfully; but those grey eyes were grave and reverent, the hands stretched out to her were strangely unsteady, and when he spoke again, his voice was placid no longer. "Dear," he said, leaning toward her, "from the very first I've been dying to have you in my arms, but now I--I dare not touch you unless you--will it so. Ah, don't--don't turn from me; let me have my answer--look up, Hermione!" Slowly she obeyed, and beholding the shy languor of her eyes, the sweet hurry of her breathing, and all the sighing, trembling loveliness of her, he set his arms about her, drawing her close; and she, yielding to those compelling arms, gave herself to the passion of his embrace. And so he kissed her, her warm, soft-quivering mouth, her eyes, her silken hair, until she sighed and struggled in his clasp. "My hair," she whispered, "see--it's all coming down!" "Well, let it--I'd love to see it so, Hermione." "Should you? Why then--let me go," she pleaded.