commented on this hopefully to Clara, she promptly was supplied with a reason: "They ain't got the nerve; they see you ain't sunk to them yet. Watch 'em when a girl below 'em gets around. Dearie, don't buy yourself any bunk 'bout the superior virtues of the poor; I'm from 'em."
Of course, many men who considered themselves the equal or the superior of the agent for Bostrock's Business Boosters invariably met her either with impersonal indifference or with courteous consideration when she solicited orders from them; and then she would remember that her father invariably had seemed to her wholly impersonal or kindly considerate to girls in business,—until she found out about Sybil Russell.
How and where did her father and Mrs. Russell meet, she wondered. In his office? At a dance hall or cabaret? When at home she speculated about this, it had seemed to her an item of mere curiosity, but now it had become almost a fundamental question; and she needed to know about Mrs. Russell, much more. Gregg was right about that, she came to admit to herself; and she came to increasing and increasing desire to see Gregg and talk over everything with him, though she continued wholly to lack any longing for Billy. Partly, she supposed, this was due to her dread of the frightful emotional storm she was sure to be subjected to, when he found her; but partly also it was because she realized that, after it, she would be only worse off in mind and soul than before. And sometimes this struck her as particularly strange, because she thought she naturally would want, as offset to her present experiences, the companionship of a man who, though all the rest of the men in the world were polluted, would keep himself
