"Now, my experience of what is called a gentleman in England is, that so long as he has got plenty of money to spend, and everything's made smooth for him, he may be quite a decent sort; but he's the most helpless creature on God's earth when his pockets are empty and he has to trust to himself to fill them. So long as he has friends to give him a lift he may manage somehow, but when his only friend is himself he's scrambling for crusts in the gutter almost before he himself knows it. To one who has had to earn his bread all his life by the sweat of his brow it's nothing less than amazing how soon he gets there. Mr. Sydney Beaton was in the gutter, and worse than the gutter, when I first met him." At last Miss Forster did turn, and looked the speaker in the face. "Where did you first meet him?" Miss Spurrier was settling her beautiful hat upon her well-groomed head. "It's not a pretty story--not very much to his credit or mine. You don't know how little of a hero a man can be when his stomach's empty and he has nothing to put into it, especially when he's a gentleman." Apparently the visitor got her hat all right. She rested both hands on the handle of her parasol and she smiled. "I want to slur over the disagreeable places in my story, Miss Forster--I always do like to avoid as much as possible what is unpleasant--and I don't want to keep you any longer than I can help. I want to get to what I'm after by the shortest possible way. You know what my profession is?" "I can form a shrewd guess." "I shouldn't be surprised; circumstances have helped you. But the world in general, Miss Forster, treats me as in every respect your equal. I was on my beam ends when I adopted it. I dare say you don't know what it is to be on your beam ends." "I am thankful to say that is a condition of which I have no personal knowledge." "You have cause to be thankful. Well, I have, and so has Sydney Beaton. If it hadn't been for me he'd have been dead long ago, with cold, misery and hunger." "Is that true?" "If you doubt it, you can. Say you don't believe me. Well--don't. I taught him one way of keeping himself alive and of putting money in his pocket, and he managed to do both. But it was a way he never liked; there were times when, I believe, that after all he would have rather starved." "So I should imagine." "Oh, you can imagine a great deal, I shouldn't wonder, but do you think you've imagination enough to enable you to put yourself in the place of the woman who was peddling matches at the corner of the street as we came along, with odd boots on--such boots!--and no stockings, and probably little more on than a skirt which it would make you uncomfortable to think of touching even with your finger-tips? You say you never could be in the position of such a woman--but he was." One could see that, in spite of herself, Miss Forster shivered. "Is that absolutely a fact?"