"I speak like a woman who has reached the lowest rung of destitution and been fed on charity. I----Oh, don't, _don't_ keep forcing me to make a child of myself like this; let me go! Perhaps you're quite right--things 'll improve." "You shall go presently; not yet--not till I say you may." There was silence between them once more. He lay back, with his hands thrust deep into his trouser-pockets, and his feet crossed, pondering. "You weren't brought up to anything, of course?" he said abruptly. "Never been trained to anything? You can't do anything, or make anything, that has any market value?" "I lived at home." "And now you're helpless! What rot it is! Why didn't your father teach you to use your hands?" "I think you said you were a doctor?" she returned, lifting her head. "Eh? Yes, my name is 'Kincaid.'" "My father was Dr. Anthony Brettan; he never expected his daughter to be in such want." "You don't say so--your father was one of us? I'm glad to make your acquaintance. Is it 'Miss Brettan'?" She nodded, warming with an impulse to go further and cry, "Also I have been a nurse: you are a doctor, can't you get me something to do?" But if she did, he would require corroboration, and, in the absence of her certificate, institute inquiries at the hospital; and then the whisper would circulate that "Brettan was no longer living with her husband"--they would soon ascertain that he had not died--and from that point to the truth would be the veriest step. "Never married at all--the disgrace! Of course, an actor, but fancy _her_!" She could see their faces, the astonishment of their contempt. Narrow circle as it was, it had been her world--she could not do it! "But surely, Miss Brettan," he said, "there must be someone who can serve you a little--someone who can put you in the way of an occupation?" Immediately she regretted having proclaimed so much as she had. "My father lived very quietly, and socially he was hardly a popular man. For several reasons I wouldn't like my distress to be talked about by people who knew him." "Those people are your credentials, though," he urged; "you can't afford to turn your back on them. If you'll be guided by advice, you will swallow your pride." "I couldn't; I made the resolve to stand alone, and I shall stick to it. Besides, you are wrong in supposing that any one of them would exert himself for me to any extent; my father did not have--was not intimate enough with anybody." A difficult woman to aid, thought Kincaid pityingly. A notion had flashed across his mind, at her reference to the kind of employment she had desired, and the announcement of her parentage was strengthening it; but there must be something to go upon, something more than mere assertion. "If a post turned up, who is there to speak for you?" "Messrs. Pattenden; I believe they'd speak for me willingly." "Anybody else?" "No; but the manager would see anyone who went to him about me, I'm almost sure."