Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/208

 were no drawing-rooms and no books of etiquette. He had a manifest self-possession. He did not become obsequious before this great lady as Judge Weissman and other men in stations beneath her had done. He treated her, after all, as his equal. He was even a little arrogant; a trifle scornful of her wealth.

"Miss Irene," he observed presently, "is a noble woman. You understand she gives up her life to my people. Do you know where she is now?" His voice was raised, his manner excited. "She's looking after the fellows that got hurt. There was a woman, too. I saw her . . . shot through the arm . . . Ah, Miss Irene is a saint. You know she could go anywhere in the Flats. No one would touch her."

The whole speech was touched with a tone of simple adoration. The essence of him was a great, a really profound simplicity.

"She works hard," said Lily. "She works hard. She cares for nothing else." By the watch on her white wrist it was midnight. "So that is why she is late," she added.

"There will be much work for her to-night," said Krylenko. He kept watching Lily in the same furtive fashion, his gaze wandering to the lovely line of her bare white throat.

Again there was an awkward pause. "You don't know how much she does," he said presently. "You don't know what life is in the Flats. You sit here in a warm house . . . with silk and pillows and good food. You don't know," he said bitterly. "You don't know!"

Until now their conversation had been broken, disjointed, awkward, as if circumstance compelled them to talk about something. Now for the first time, a certain fire entered the Russian's voice. Lily kept silent, watching him with her great burning eyes. She still trembled.

"Maybe you think I like working twelve hours a day in that hot shed like you saw me. Maybe you think I don't want time to read and think." The man was working himself into a kind of frenzy. "You don't know. . . . You don't know. . . . And then they shoot us down like pigs." He leaned forward and raised at Lily a strong finger. "I come here from Russia. I come here because I could not live in Russia. . . . My father . . . My father . . . He was shot by the Cos-