trouble because I'm paid to do it.

Surely you'd prefer to think that I want to help you because I'm fond of you." "But how can you be fond of me?

"Why not? Why should I be any less fond of you than any other of my friends?"

Carrie could not help laughing aloud at this.

"Well, if I didn't know you, Mr. Lidderdale, I'd say you was trying to speak sarcastic. Only you never do speak sarcastic. So I suppose it's right what they say

you are."

"Oh, do people say that I am anything?" Mark inquired. "What do they say that I am?"

"They say you're a Socialist. And I reckon they're right. Or else you wouldn't go talking of being my friend. Well, it is a bit silly, when you come to think it."

"But my being friends with you, Carrie, has nothing to do with my politics. And perhaps it isn't so silly as you think. In fact, it's just because you do feel in your heart that I'm a friend that you can tell me I'm silly." "Well, I did have a cheek to say that," Carrie admitted.

"It would have been cheek if I were not your friend," Mark argued. "But as I am, it wasn't."

"But a girl like me can't be friends with a gentleman," Carrie insisted obstinately.

"But I'm not a gentleman," Mark said.

"Oh, go on. Of course you are."

"I'm a priest."

"Well, Church of England clergymen always count with the gentry. Wesleyans don't, perhaps. But then they're called ministers. Some call them clergymen, but that's only ignorance."

"Well, let's agree to differ on that point, Carrie. It's not very important now, and it certainly won't have any importance at all in Heaven."

'Heaven," Carrie repeated to herself. "Do you reckon that's right what they say about Heaven?" "What do they say?"

"Why, as everyone will be singing for ever and ever and waving palms and playing harps and all that. Because if it is, I reckon Heaven's soppy, I do."

Mark hesitated for a moment before committing himself to an opinion.

"Nobody on earth can have the least idea what Heaven will be like. All we know is that we shall see God face to face and be happy beyond all imagination for ever and ever. I don't think that I should bother my head about the singing and the harps if I were you.

"I don't bother my head about Heaven at all," Carrie said. "It's no use bothering about something you know you'll never get, and I reckon this baby I'm going to have has put the lid on Heaven as far as I'm concerned."

"Nonsense! Mark said sharply. He wanted very much to add that the honesty of her attitude had probably brought her much nearer to Heaven than most people; but he supposed that it would be difficult to explain this without making light of what she had done, and he thought he would try to bring this home to her in another way.

"Listen to me, Carrie, and please don't listen to me as if I were preaching a sermon. When you gave way to your lover because he taunted you with not loving him, were you acting selfishly or unselfishly?"

"I never stopped to think. I did love him, and if he wasn't going to believe me I'd got to prove it." "Then you did stop to think about him. But what you didn't stop to think was about your child. Let's leave right and wrong out of it for the moment. Don't let's bother about God at all. Let's think only of men. Don't you know that an illegitimate child suffers all its life for something that was not its own fault?"

"Well, you might say that of any child. I reckon married people don't think much about what may come. I know my father belted me when I was a kiddie, and if I'd never had a father I'd have been happier."

"Well, suppose somebody wanted to be rude to you. What's the rudest thing they can call you? Wouldn't 'bastard' be the biggest insult of all?

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"Oo! Mr. Lidderdale," Carrie exclaimed in horror. "Fancy you saying such a shocking word!"

"It only means illegitimate,' Mark said. "Other

words with much more dreadful meanings are used, and nobody minds very much."

"But I can't hardly believe you could say such a word. Well, if I was to tell anyone, only of course I wouldn'twell, I wouldn't repeat it for one thing..." Carrie was too much overcome to finish the sentence.

"But this dreadful word that so shocks you, dear Carrie, can be said by anybody to your child, and that child will have to put up with it, unless you can get married to this man."

"Well, of course I'd like to be married if I could be," said Carrie. "And that's why I won't say who it is. I know the fellow and what he's like. He's very contrary, for one thing. And if he thought he was being forced into marrying me, he'd do anything rather than give way. Anything he'd do. Because I know him. He's that kind of a fellow. And if he don't marry me after me keeping quiet about him, and if he leaves me-well, then he can't care for me, and I'd rather starve in the gutter, kid and all, than feel he'd married me and never wanted to. That's what my mother did. And she paid for it. And so did I, because my father he put it all down to me, and belted me sometimes so as I couldn't hardly stand on my feet."

Mark saw that no further argument he could bring would be of any avail.

I

"I shan't try any more to persuade you, Carrie. hope that you'll be successful. If you're not, you know that you can always count on my help."

"Oh, I shan't bother you if I don't get married," she said. "You nor anybody else. What I done I done with my eyes open.'

When Mark told the Vicar of his unsuccess in finding out the name of Carrie's lover, the Vicar replied that in that case she must leave the house immediately.

"But you're not going to turn her into the street? Where will she go? What will she do?" Mark exclaimed.

"I had already made perfectly clear to the girl before I called you down the penalty for not telling me the man's

name. Besides, I don't intend to turn her into the street. That is one of your exaggerations, Lidderdale. I shall take steps to see that she is received into a home."

"But suppose she declines to go into a home? She is a girl with a very keen sense of the position in which she has got herself. She blames nobody except herself, and she hopes by the decency of her behaviour . . ."

"Decency!" the Vicar ejaculated. "I'm surprised you consider'decent' the word for her behaviour.'

"Well, I'm using decent in a wider sense, Vicar," Mark said a little impatiently. "And must we dispute. over synonyms when a human soul is in the balance?"" "Exaggeration again!"

Mark let this pass, for he was too anxious about Carrie to imperil her chance by losing his temper.

"I'm bound to say, Vicar, that I see the girl's point of view, and really I respect it. She considers that she is as much to blame as him. She hopes that by not forcing him to do the right thing, he will do the right thing of his own accord. Apparently her mother got into trouble, and great misery was the result of the man's being forced to marry her."

"She evidently comes of a rotten stock," the Vicar said bitterly.

"That is really nonsense, Vicar. I simply will not accept an expression of humanity's most fundamental impulse as an indication of rottenness. It's by talking

such rot that we parsons have lost our influence."

"You are always very severe on Broad Churchmen who surrender vital points of our creed. You are following the same fashion in another direction by surrendering vital points of our moral teaching."

"I'm doing nothing of the kind," Mark contradicted. "But please don't let's dispute about my point of view now. I apologize if I spoke rudely. I want you to keep the girl here until there is no chance of getting the fellow to own up and play the man. If that happens, then of course I suppose the best place would be a home. should suggest the Community of St. Mary Magdalene, in Shoreditch. Meanwhile, however, it is surely our duty to keep her here under our protection and incidentally to

I

bridle Mrs. Middleditch's tongue, which is not calculated to make any girl see the error of her ways.'

"I really cannot believe that you are speaking seriously, Lidderdale," the Vicar said. "Do you suppose that it will be possible to keep the girl's condition a secret?"

"No, I don't suppose for a moment that it's possible," Mark replied.

"And what is going to be the effect on the parish of apparently encouraging a girl to sin?"

"The effect on the parish will be the effect of Christian charity's being practised and not merely preached," Mark said.

"You have very strange notions of a country parish, if that's what you think. I've known for a long time that you despise my work here. You've made your opinion only too evident. I've done my best to appreciate your point of view, and I have recognized my own lack of courage in the matter of the services. But I am beginning to believe that you value eccentricity for its own sake. Your attitude in this matter horrifies me by an utter lack of moral feeling. You don't seem to have the slightest desire to impress the girl with the enormity of what she has done.'

"I should feel better justified in trying to do that when I had done all I could to guarantee her future," Mark said. "My duty as a priest is surely to be warned by what has happened to her and to use every effort to save her from worse happening. Even the law tries in its sterile way to help first offenders. You may accuse me of exaggeration, but I repeat that a human soul is at stake. If you try to make her go into a home now, she won't go. If you turn her out of the house, what chance has she got of being anything but embittered? You know what people are like in a place of this kind. You know the humiliations she will have to endure from the respectable, humiliations that will drive her into company of a looser sort. Vicar, you are not a hard man. exercise your imagination. You won't regret it, I'm sure of that. Do ring your bell now and tell Carrie that she can stay here for the time and consider herself free to do

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