"Yes, a buncher there, as they're called," he was quaintly explaining--"quite the best one in the shop, I'm told, though she's only eighteen years old. She has a record of 6,500 cheroots in one day--" "But she has been taken sick at it, you say?" "Undoubtedly she has a temperature to-night," said he, in an intent sort of way, desirous of giving his information accurately. "I didn't stop to take it,' as perhaps I should have done--" "And she caught her fever at the Works, you think?" "Oh!... Well, of course I shouldn't say that. You know--" "But of course the Works _are_ full of terrible diseases, and everybody who works there quickly catches something and dies?" Then the unmistakable hostility of her tone caught his engrossed ear. Carlisle saw his expression change a little; only it did not change nearly so much as she meant it to. He gave an embarrassed little laugh.... "But oh, _please_," said the voice of Mats, near by, "do go back and tell me what _terminology_ means. You don't know how _terribly stupid _I am...." "Of course, it isn't nearly so bad as that," said he. "Factory work is hard at best, you know. And conditions in it are never very good, rarely even so good as they might be, as it seems to me. But this little friend of mine that I--I mentioned, she's--" "Why did you mention her to me at all?" The tall young man in the fat-man's dress-suit gazed down. He pushed back his crisp hair.... It was true that one from the outskirts could rise now and gird up his loins: the scribes actually called before the flap of his tent. True, in the most technical sense, that is.... And yet--was the passing social moment a proper occasion to shout and preach at the unlessoned upon the grim subject of their moral opportunities in this so complex world? Where was even the solitude be hind the rubber plants which Kern had (practically) guaranteed? Was it kind, was it even well-mannered, to spoil a young girl's pleasure at an evening party with bitter talk of fire-escapes and overstrained floors? John the Baptist, God knows, should have been a gentleman.... But if any thoughts like this played through the alien's mind, he certainly wore no air of perplexity or hesitancy. He answered without pause, in quite a gentle way: "Well, it just seemed to come in naturally somehow. We just seemed to drift into it...." But it was no time for gentleness now. Carlisle Heth was whipping up her anger to destroy him. And all the time, a part of her (the largest part, it seemed) knew quite well that she was whipping it up: wondered why it didn't surge more spontaneously, as she had such a perfect right to expect.... "But conditions _are_ homicidal in my father's factory, are they not?" "Oh," said the man ... "Well, as to that--of course opinions would differ somewhat as to what consti--" "You seem to--to have more courage in your opinions when you're writing letters," she flung at him, bright cheeked.... "Are they homicidal?"