She met his look steadily. “It was easy in a way. I could see round me what was the right thing to do. Oh, that was what was so awful in the old life over there at Heddington,”--she pointed beyond the hill, “we didn’t know what was good and what was bad. The poor people in big working-places like Heddington ain’t much better than heathens, leastways as to most things that matter. They haven’t got a sensible religion, not one that gets down into what they do. The parson doesn’t reach them--he talks about church and the sacraments, and they don’t get at what good it’s going to do them. And the chapel preachers ain’t much better. They talk and sing and pray, when what the people want is light, and hot water, and soap, and being shown how to live, and how to bring up children healthy and strong, and decent-cooked food. I’d have food-hospitals if I could, and I’d give the children in the schools one good meal a day. I’m sure the children of the poor go wrong and bad more through the way they live than anything. If only they was taught right--not as though they was paupers! Give me enough nurses of the right sort, and enough good, plain cooks, and meat three times a week, and milk and bread and rice and porridge every day, and I’d make a new place of any town in England in a year. I’d--” She stopped all at once, however, and flushing, said: “I didn’t stop to think I was talking to you, sir.” “I am glad you speak to me so,” he answered gently. “You and I are both reformers at heart.” “Me? I’ve done nothing, sir, not any good to anybody or anything.” “Not to Jasper Kimber?” “You did that, sir; he says so; he says you made him.” A quick laugh passed David’s lips. “Men are not made so easily. I think I know the trowel and the mortar that built that wall! Thee will marry him, friend?” Her eyes burned as she looked at him. She had been eternally dispossessed of what every woman has the right to have--one memory possessing the elements of beauty. Even if it remain but for the moment, yet that moment is hers by right of her sex, which is denied the wider rights of those they love and serve. She had tasted the cup of bitterness and drunk of the waters of sacrifice. Married life had no lure for her. She wanted none of it. The seed of service had, however, taken root in a nature full of fire and light and power, undisciplined and undeveloped as it was. She wished to do something--the spirit of toil, the first habit of the life of the poor, the natural medium for the good that may be in them, had possession of her. This man was to her the symbol of work. To have cared for his home, to have looked after his daily needs, to have sheltered him humbly from little things, would have been her one true happiness. And this was denied her. Had she been a man, it would have been so easy. She could have offered to be his servant; could have done those things which she could do better than any, since hers would be a heart-service.