"You wanted me to get away an' get a decent job," she dully answered. "Not here." "What's the difference? What's the difference whether it's here or somewheres else? I can't see." "But here all the time I should know." "Don't you know, wherever you are, about lots of others that don't get away? An' does that hurt you? Wouldn't you know about me wherever you are, about me wherever I went? An' would that hurt me?" "You don't understand!" He seemed to charge her with her admitted incomprehension as if it were a crime. "No, I don't," she repeated. "Can't you see that if you were somewhere else, it would be different?" "I'm sorry, but I can't." "Not if you were where nobody knew about you?" "No, I don't see that, Mr. Beekman. I haven't got any disease to give people." "I wasn't thinking that." "Well, you wouldn't tell on me to the people I went to if I went somewheres else?" "Certainly I wouldn't." "An' you don't think I'd steal, do you?" "Of course not." "Nor--nor get anybody who was kind to me into the sort of a hell I worked so hard to get myself out of?" "How could I think it? What are you driving at, Violet?" "This: that if all them things is the way you say, I'm fit for any job I'm able to do--an' I'm able to do this one." "Not in this house." "What's the difference where?" Her voice was still low, and her words still came slowly; but she was, however imperfectly and painfully, beginning to think--which is a very dangerous thing in any exploited individual. "What's the difference where?" she asked. "What you know don't make me no worse, an' what I know don't make me no better. The truth's the truth. What's happened's happened. I used to be a girl in Rose's house, no matter if I was now workin' in your house an' you do know what I used to be. Wherever I am, I'm what I am; your knowin' it don't help or hinder; an' if I'm fit for next door I'm fit for here." Philip Beekman passed his long fingers through his black hair. It was the gesture she had seen him employ on that remembered night at Rose's, but now it had a new significance. The young man was as much the creature of his surroundings as Violet was the creation of hers. He could no more appreciate her point of view than she could comprehend his. It was as if they spoke different tongues. Beekman was powerless to argue further, and when a man reaches that condition, he takes a firm stand upon authority. "All right," he said; "we won't waste words. The hard fact is that you've got to go. I'm sorry, but you've got to go and go now." She bowed her head; she had finished. He wished she would answer; he wished she would fly into a rage; but as she remained dumb, he continued: "I suppose your hat and jacket are in the kitchen. You can drop me a card telling me where to send your trunk. I'll explain this to your--to my mother somehow. I'll do whatever I can for you--outside." A slow shake of her russet head was her reply.