CHAPTER II


Genevieve and Joe were working-class aristocrats. In an environment made
up largely of sordidness and wretchedness they had kept themselves
unsullied and wholesome. Theirs was a self-respect, a regard for the
niceties and clean things of life, which had held them aloof from their
kind. Friends did not come to them easily; nor had either ever possessed
a really intimate friend, a heart-companion with whom to chum and have
things in common. The social instinct was strong in them, yet they had
remained lonely because they could not satisfy that instinct and at that
same time satisfy their desire for cleanness and decency.

If ever a girl of the working class had led the sheltered life, it was
Genevieve. In the midst of roughness and brutality, she had shunned all
that was rough and brutal. She saw but what she chose to see, and she
chose always to see the best, avoiding coarseness and uncouthness without
effort, as a matter of instinct. To begin with, she had been peculiarly
unexposed. An only child, with an invalid mother upon whom she attended,
she had not joined in the street games and frolics of the children of the
neighbourhood. Her father, a mild-tempered, narrow-chested, anaemic
little clerk, domestic because of his inherent disability to mix with
men, had done his full share toward giving the home an atmosphere of
sweetness and tenderness.

An orphan at twelve, Genevieve had gone straight from her father's