emphatic. "If I went with you, it'd only get both of us into
deeper trouble." Again silence, with Sam feeling a kind of awe
as he studied the resolute, mysterious profile of the girl,
which he could now see clearly. At last he said: "And after you
get there, Susie--what will you do?"

"Find a boarding house, and then look for a place."

"What kind of a place?"

"In a store--or making dresses--or any kind of sewing. Or I
could do housework."

The sex impulse is prolific of generous impulses. He, sitting so
close to her and breathing in through his skin the emanations of
her young magnetism, was moved to the depths by the picture her
words conjured. This beautiful girl, a mere child, born and bred
in the lady class, wandering away penniless and alone, to be a
prey to the world's buffetings which, severe enough in reality,
seem savage beyond endurance to the children of wealth.

As he pictured it his heart impulsively expanded. It was at his
lips to offer to marry her. But his real self--and one's real
self is vastly different from one's impulses--his real self
forbade the words passage. Not even the sex impulse,
intoxicating him as it then was, could dethrone snobbish
calculation. He was young; so while he did not speak, he felt
ashamed of himself for not speaking. He felt that she must be
expecting him to speak, that she had the right to expect it. He
drew a little away from her, and kept silent.