"I don't see how you are to help me," she replied in a hopeless kind of way. "My uncle brought me to London. At least, he says he is my uncle. I have been brought up at a convent school in the north of England. I never saw or heard from any relative until a month ago. I was always there, terms and holidays too, except once or twice when a girl asked me to her home for a few days. You see, I am as lonely as you!" "Yes," said Felix, "I have a step-brother, but he hates me." "Well," continued Rona, "about a month ago the Mother Superior told me my uncle had written to say he was coming to fetch me away. He wanted to see me, to judge what I was best fitted for, as I should have to earn my own living. I was rather pleased, for I had always been so lonely. You don't know what it is like to live in a school where letters come, and presents, and parcels, for everybody but you; and visitors and holidays for everybody but you. I had not even known that I had an uncle. But the Mother Superior said it was all right; the letter came from the firm of solicitors who had always paid my school bills. So he came, and I was sent for, and the very first moment I saw him I knew he was all wrong. I knew I should hate him. I could see the Reverend Mother was miserable too. She did not like to let him take me away. But of course she had to. She could not prevent it." She broke off, as at some recollection which turned her sick. She shuddered. Felix had had a bowl of porridge and an egg. He was now able to give her his undivided attention. "Till he came," slowly said Rona, fixing her eyes, heavy with unshed tears, upon the tablecloth, "I had never spoken to a man, except Father Lawson. But I had an idea that men were young, and handsome, and good, and that it was their mission to care for women and protect them." Suddenly she laughed harshly, pushing her cup from her, leaning her elbows on the table and hiding her face. "I know better now," she said in an undertone. "I know better now! They are creatures that sell girls, body and soul, for money. They only care for money and what it will get. My uncle said he was going to train me for the stage. He heard me sing, and said I should have my voice trained, and be taught to dance.... He has taken me every day to a place where they handle girls as if they were apes or pet dogs. I have been made to put on horrible clothes--to dance with hardly any clothes on at all, while men stood and made remarks about the way I was made. Other girls," she said, looking up in a pitiful wonder--"there were others who didn't seem to mind--others who laughed at me for minding. But, you see, I have been taught to say my prayers, and to shrink from all immodesty. Oh, if you could know what I have undergone!" Felix growled. He clenched his hands and cursed his own physical weakness. "Well," he said--"well, what then?"