For a few moments she was silent. She looked at me however; and as I
watched her eyes grow softer I suddenly held out my hand, and for a moment
she suffered hers to rest in it. Then she drew away a little.

She was still looking at me steadfastly; but something that had seemed to
me inimical had gone from her expression.

"Mr. Walmsley," she said slowly, "I want to tell you I think you are
making a mistake. Please listen to me carefully. You do not belong to the
order of people from whom the adventurers of the world are drawn. What you
are is written in your face. I am perfectly certain you possess the
ordinary conventional ideas as to right and wrong--the ideas in which you
have been brought up and which have been instilled into you all your life.
My father and I belong to a different class of society. There is nothing
to be gained for you by mixing with us, and a great deal to be lost."

"May I not judge for myself?" I asked.

"I fear," she answered, looking me full in the face and smiling at me
delightfully, "you are just a little prejudiced."

"Supposing," I whispered, "I have discovered something that seems to me
better worth living for than anything else I have yet found in the world I
know of--if that something belongs to a world in which I have not yet
lived--do you blame me if for the sake of it I would be willing to climb
down even into----"

She held out her finger warningly. I heard heavy footsteps outside and the
rattle of the doorhandle.