believe she is on the defensive against my sex. Well, I am not going to give her aa opportunity of snubbing me. We are on very civil terms, but I shall not advance one inch from the position I have taken up. In the atelier she has told me to speak my mind, and I do so. Out of it, I mean to remain polite and distant."
His sister looked vexed; but there was no more to be said, and she wisely changed the subject.
Shortly after this, one afternoon in Hatty's atelier, Alaric happened to speak with contempt, generally, of the men in the pension before Miss Shaw.
"They are a miserable lot; each one talking of himself, and trying to belittle his neighbour."
Partly out of contradiction, I am afraid, Elizabeth said, "They amuse me rather; it is all so new. And as to what they are I dare say they are not worse than other men. I dare say they are not, any of them, absolutely criminal."
"I don't know about that, I'm sure," returned Hatty's brother, in a tone which indicated that, in his opinion, the balance of probability lay the other way. "Narishkine, I should think, as likely as not, has an intimate acquaintance with dynamite."
"Is a man who risks his own life, when he destroys others, worse, I wonder, than one who destroys others, and sacrifices all—honour, everything—to work his own ends with impunity? I don't like Monsieur Narishkine; but I am not sure, if I were a Russian, that I should not be a Nihilist."
Hatty looked up through her pince-nez, at an angle of forty-five degrees, at the turbulent young person standing
