Miss Bart received this explanation without perceptible softening. “Why didn’t she look me up herself, then?” she asked. “Because, as you didn’t send her your address, she was afraid of being importunate.” Selden continued with a smile: “You see no such scruples restrained me; but then I haven’t as much to risk if I incur your displeasure.” Lily answered his smile. “You haven’t incurred it as yet; but I have an idea that you are going to.” “That rests with you, doesn’t it? You see my initiative doesn’t go beyond putting myself at your disposal.” “But in what capacity? What am I to do with you?” she asked in the same light tone. Selden again glanced about Mrs. Hatch’s drawing-room; then he said, with a decision which he seemed to have gathered from this final inspection: “You are to let me take you away from here.” Lily flushed at the suddenness of the attack; then she stiffened under it and said coldly: “And may I ask where you mean me to go?” “Back to Gerty in the first place, if you will; the essential thing is that it should be away from here.” The unusual harshness of his tone might have shown her how much the words cost him; but she was in no state to measure his feelings while her own were in a flame of revolt. To neglect her, perhaps even to avoid her, at a time when she had most need of her friends, and then suddenly and unwarrantably to break into her life with this strange assumption of authority, was to rouse in her every instinct of pride and self-defence. “I am very much obliged to you,” she said, “for taking such an interest in my plans; but I am quite contented where I am, and have no intention of leaving.” Selden had risen, and was standing before her in an attitude of uncontrollable expectancy. “That simply means that you don’t know where you are!” he exclaimed. Lily rose also, with a quick flash of anger. “If you have come here to say disagreeable things about Mrs. Hatch——” “It is only with your relation to Mrs. Hatch that I am concerned.” “My relation to Mrs. Hatch is one I have no reason to be ashamed of. She has helped me to earn a living when my old friends were quite resigned to seeing me starve.” “Nonsense! Starvation is not the only alternative. You know you can always find a home with Gerty till you are independent again.” “You show such an intimate acquaintance with my affairs that I suppose you mean—till my aunt’s legacy is paid?” “I do mean that; Gerty told me of it,” Selden acknowledged without embarrassment. He was too much in earnest now to feel any false constraint in speaking his mind. “But Gerty does not happen to know,” Miss Bart rejoined, “that I owe every penny of that legacy.” “Good God!” Selden exclaimed, startled out of his composure by the abruptness of the statement.