She was glancing toward the door, with the moving and humming groups beyond, and so missed the sudden eagerness that briefly lit his face. "What part of the work--if I might ask--were you--specially interested in?" "I suppose I'm not really interested in any part. That must be the trouble. Probably it's just the usual dissatisfied feeling--when one is a little tired of parties...." Was that not yet another confidence, clearly calling for an understanding listener, for sympathetic reassurance? Nothing of the sort came to Cally; nothing of any sort. The brief pause, sharpened as it was by Mr. V.V.'s oddly formal bearing, was rather like a cold douche. And now it seemed that she must have been counting on this man somehow all along, though it was not clear as to what.... "So you see my peace of mind is quite safe. Mr. Pond is right, of course...." And then, thinking that this cool distance was rather absurd under the circumstances, she added in a friendlier way: "But why aren't you the Director here, instead of Mr. Pond? I should think you would be, since it's your Settlement." But the result of that was only to bring new stiffness into the strange young man's manner. "My Settlement!... Oh, I beg that you won't speak or think of it in that way. I assure you I've nothing at all to do with it, other than as one worker out of many." Her unwarlike reply was: "Well, I haven't told anybody." She glanced at him with a touch of bewilderment, and glanced away again, turning toward the door. Surely he had not always been like this.... "Mr. Avery will think I'm lost," said Cally. However, Mr. V.V. successfully checked her departure, saying: "I'm sure you can be of the realest help to the Settlement, Miss Heth, if you care to be." And, then, veering abruptly, he said with his air of making a plunge: "But I must take this opportunity to speak to you of another matter. A matter which, I fear, will be disagreeable to you." That sufficiently arrested her; she stood looking at him, with a conflict of sensations within. Faces of Settlementers appeared in the door, looked in at the bare room, passed from view again. The tall young man in the new suit pushed back his hair, with the quaint gesture he had. "You once said," he continued, in a voice of light hardness, "that I brought you nothing but trouble. That seems to continue true, though perhaps you won't regard this as so--so serious...." Trouble? More trouble for Cally Heth? "Why--what do you mean?" "The question of the Heth Works--has come up again. That, at least, is the particular application. Of course many other factories are involved." The girl was completely taken aback. "Why, I don't understand. What has come up?" He then explained himself, in well-ordered sentences: