Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/444

 sordid to wish to escape from hell? Is it sordid for a mother to do anything—anything in the world—to try to get her child out of that same hell? Is it sordid"

"You admit it then."

"I admit what?"

"That you have followed this man, this gross"

"Who is that?" she asked coldly. "Who is 'gross'?" Then she sat down, folding her arms and looking at him from beneath half-lowered eyelids. "You needn't say any more, my friend. You make what you feel about him perfectly clear."

What I feel about him'!" Laurence echoed in sharpest scorn. "What do you feel about him, yourself? What does anybody feel about him? You know what he is as well as I do."

"What is that?"

"A great barbarian."

"Yes," she said quietly. "That is what I thought of him when I first saw him on the steamer. I saw him in that light—a great barbarian, precisely. I saw him in the most amusing contrast to you and your two little friends."

"What?"

"Wait!" she said, speaking louder, and she opened