"You are so kind, so good." There was deep feeling in her voice; she looked at him with a certain wistful eagerness. "You really do care, don't you? Shall I tell you? I should like to. It seems silly not to tell you, and I think you have a right to know--after to-day." "I really care a great deal, Hilda; but--I don't want to take an unfair advantage, you know; I really have no right whatsoever. Wait till this impulse of unmerited gratitude has passed." "But it is nothing to tell, really nothing. You see--I make money. I have to--I teach. There; that is all." Peter looked at her, at the white oval of her face, at the unfashionable little hat, at the shabby coat and skirt. A lily of the field who toiled and spun. And a hot resentment rose within him as he thought of the father, the mother, the sister. "Why _have_ you to?" he asked, in a hard voice. "We are so dreadfully poor, and we are so dreadfully in debt." "But why you alone? What can _you_ do?" "I can do a good deal. I have been very lucky. I love my work too, and I make money by it, so it is natural. Mamma, of course, would think it terrible, degrading even; but I can't agree with mamma's point of view; I think it is quite wrong. I see nothing terrible or degrading." "No; nothing terrible or degrading, I grant you." "You think I am right, don't you?" "Yes; quite right, dear, quite right." Odd paused before adding: "It is the incongruity that is shocking." "The incongruity?" Hilda's voice was vague. "Between your life and theirs; yes." "Oh, you don't understand. I love my work; it is my pleasure. Besides, they don't know; they don't realize the necessity either." "Why the teaching? I thought your pictures sold well." "And so they do, often; but I took up the teaching some years ago, before I had any hope of selling my pictures; it is very _sure_, very well paid, and I really find it a rest after five hours of studio work; after five hours I don't feel a picture any longer." "Yet they must know that the money comes from somewhere?" Hilda's voice in replying held a pained quality; this attack on her family very evidently perplexed her. "Mamma thinks it comes from papa, and papa, I suppose, doesn't think about it at all; he knows, too, that I sell my pictures. You mustn't imagine," she added, with a touch of pride and resentment, "that they would let me teach if they knew; you mustn't imagine that for one moment. And I don't mean to let them know, for then I couldn't help them; as it is, my help is limited. The money goes, for the most part, towards _guarding_ mamma. She could not bear shocks and anxiety." Odd said nothing for some moments. "How did it begin? how did you come to think of it?" he asked.