He was fully sensible of the contempt with which she had spoken his name, a name that was odious to clean women in this city of his birth. He mused upon this fact as he started toward the door through which she had vanished; he was a notorious character whom people of all classes knew by sight and reputation. She had, he imagined, suffered him to speak to her only that she might see for herself how contemptible man might become. The girl’s scorn emphasized his degradation. She was unknown and poor, but he had sunk so low that even poverty and obscurity shrank from him. Those simpering young things who had cut him a little while before, those bread and butter misses who reflected merely the meticulous virtue of their own social order, did not matter. But this young woman with her labour-roughened hands had widened the gulf between him and decency with a glance, a turn of the head, a word. Her words continued to mock him as he left the gallery and descended the stairway to the orchestra board’s room below. He kept wondering what musical instrument her voice suggested and the thought of her was so enthralling that he passed the committee room and did not come to himself until a guard touched his cap and pointed him to the door. He and Wingfield were the only members of the board who appeared to-day, as frequently happened. Wayne sat down at a window to discuss the programmes that had been submitted by the orchestra director, which Wingfield now proceeded to tear to pieces. “That Dutchman’s idea of popular music is certainly exquisite. We’re not going to appeal to the primitive tastes of our dear fellow-citizens by larding a Wagnerian programme with the Blue Danube waltz and the Bon-Ton two-step. And Mendelssohn’s Spring Song as a harp solo is too stale. We’re going to keep on shoving symphonies into the people of our dear city this winter as you shovel coal into a furnace. Well, what now?” Wayne’s glance, straying to the street through the window by which they sat, had fallen upon the girl whom he had left in the gallery a moment before. She had emerged from the main entrance of the building and was moving off briskly. But what had drawn an exclamation from Craighill was the appearance upon the scene of a man who seemed to have been waiting and who now followed the girl at a discreet distance. It was, beyond question, Joe, Wayne’s chauffeur, whom he had dismissed for the day an hour before. Wingfield, following Wayne’s glance, saw only the girl, now passing rapidly out of sight. “Who’s your Diana, Wayne? She has the stride of a goddess and carries her head as though she had just brushed the rest of the deities off Olympus.” “I don’t know her,” said Craighill, and changed the subject. CHAPTER VII WAYNE COUNSELS HIS SISTER