Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/244

232 "No," he said, "I'm willing—even anxious, I think—to believe that you would not—could not—"

"Oh," she cried, jumping up, "this is intolerable! How dare you!"

He had risen too.

"I'm not afraid of you," he said. "I'm not afraid of your anger, nor of your—your other weapons. Think what you are! Think of your great powers—and you are wasting them all in making fools of a pack of young idiots—"

"But what could I do with my gifts—as you call them?"

"Do?—why, you could endow and organise and run any one of a hundred schemes for helping on God's work in the world."

"For instance?" Her charming smile enraged him.

"For instance? Well—for instance—you might start a home for those women who began as you have begun, and who have gone down into hell, as you will go—unless you let yourself be warned."

She was for the moment literally speechless. Then she remembered how he had said; "I am