coincidences, Miss Warden? To my mind, they may be described as the zero on the roulette- board of life.'
He regarded her fondly.
'For a shy man, conscious that the girl he loves is inspecting him closely and making up her mind about him,' he proceeded, 'these unexpected meetings are very trying ordeals. You must not form your judgment of me too hastily. You see me now, nervous, embarrassed, tongue-tied. But I am not always like this. Beneath this crust of diffidence there is sterling stuff, Miss Warden. People who know me have spoken of me as a little ray of sun-But here is your father.'
Mr. Warden was more than usually disappointed with Ruth during dinner. It was the same old story. So far from making herself pleasant to this attractive stranger, she seemed positively to dislike him. She was barely civil to him. With a sigh Mr. Warden told himself that he did not understand Ruth, and the rosy dreams he had formed began to fade.
Ruth's ideas on the subject of Mr. Vince as the days went by were chaotic. Though she told herself that she thoroughly objected to him, he had nevertheless begun to have an undeniable attraction for her. In what this attraction consisted she could not say. When she tried to analyse it, she came to the conclusion that it was due to the fact that he was the only element in her life that made for excitement. Since his advent the days had certainly passed more swiftly for her. The dead-level of monotony had been broken. There was a certain fascination in exerting herself to suppress him, which increased daily as each attempt failed.
Mr. Vince put this feeling into words for her. He had a maddening habit of discussing the progress of his courtship in the manner of an impartial lecturer.
'I am making headway,' he observed. 'The fact that we cannot meet without your endeavouring to plant a temperamental left jab on my spiritual sola plexus encourages me to think that you are beginning at last to understand that we are affinities. To persons of spirit like ourselves the only happy marriage is that which is based on a firm foundation of almost incessant quarrelling. The most beautiful line in English poetry, to my mind, is, 'We fell out, my wife and I.' You would be wretched with a husband who didn't like you to quarrel with him. The position of affairs now is that I have become necessary to you. If I went out of your life now I should leave an aching void. You would still have that beautiful punch of yours, and there would be nobody to exercise it on. You would pine away. From now on matters should, I think, move rapidly. During the course of the next week I shall endeavour to propitiate you with gifts. Here is the first of them.'
He took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to her. It was a pencil-sketch, rough and unfinished, but wonderfully clever. Even Ruth could appreciate that-and she was a prejudiced observer, for the sketch was a caricature of herself. It represented her, drawn up to her full height, with enormous, scornful eyes and curling lips, and the artist had managed to combine an excellent likeness while accentuating everything that was marked in what she knew had come to be her normal expression of scorn and discontent.
'I didn't know you were an artist, Mr. Vince,' she said, handing it back.
'A poor amateur. Nothing more. You may keep it.'
'I have not the slightest wish to keep it.'
'You haven't?'
'It is not in the least clever, and it is very impertinent of you to show it to me. The drawing is not funny. It is simply rude.'
'A little more,' said Mr. Vince, 'and I shall begin to think you don't like it. Are you fond of chocolates?'
Ruth did not answer.
'I am sending you some to-morrow.'
'I shall return them.'
'Then I shall send some more, and some fruit. Gifts!' soliloquized Mr. Vince. 'Gifts! That is the secret. Keep sending gifts. If men would only stick to gifts and quarrelling, there would be fewer bachelors.'
On the morrow, as promised, the chocolates arrived, many pounds of them in a lordly box. The bludgeoning of fate had not wholly scotched in Ruth a human weakness for sweets, and it was with a distinct effort that she wrapped the box up again and returned it to the sender. She went off to her work at the mont- de-piete with the glow of satisfaction which comes to those who exhibit an iron will in trying circumstances.
And at the mont-de-piete there occurred a surprising incident.
Surprising incidents, as Mr. Vince would have said, are the zero on the roulette-board of life. They pop up disturbingly when least expected, confusing the mind and altering preconceived opinions. And this was a very surprising incident indeed.
Ruth, as has been stated, sat during her hours of work behind a ground-glass screen, unseen and unseeing. To her the patrons of the establishment were mere disembodied voices-wheedling voices, pathetic voices, voices that protested, voices that hectored, voices that whined, moaned, broke, appealed to the saints, and in various other ways endeavoured to instil into M. Gandinot more spacious and princely views on the subject of advancing money on property pledged. She was sitting behind her screen this morning, scribbling idly on the plotting-pad, for there had been a lull in the business, when the door opened, and the polite 'Bon jour, monsieur,' of M. Gandinot announced the arrival of another unfortunate.
And then, shaking her like an electric shock, came a voice that she knew-the pleasant voice of Mr. Vince.
The dialogues that took place on the other side of the screen were often protracted and always sordid, but none had seemed to Ruth so interminable, so hideously sordid, as this one.
Round and round its miserable centre-a silver cigarettecase-the dreary argument circled. The young man pleaded; M. Gandinot, adamant in his official role, was immovable.
Ruth could bear it no longer. She pressed her hands over her burning ears, and the voices ceased to trouble her.
And with the silence came thought, and a blaze of understanding that flashed upon her and made all things clear. She understood now why she had closed her ears.
Poverty is an acid which reacts differently on differing natures. It had reduced Mr. Eugene Warden's self- respect to a minimum. Ruth's it had reared up to an abnormal growth. Her pride had become a weed that ran riot in her soul, darkening it and choking finer emotions. Perhaps it was her father's naive stratagems for the enmeshing of
