But that did not mean that they could afford to help this girl, or
would be delighted to receive her home under the present conditions.
Rather it indicated that their position was too precarious for them to
be able to do it. They would be bitterly hard on her--these aspiring
people of gentle birth and doubtful shifts, clinging to society by the
skin of their teeth, were the hardest of all. The girl could not go
back to them; she could not get anything to do in Holland, or
elsewhere--in Heaven's name what could she do?
He asked himself the question with his hands in his pockets and his
eyes on the street. But the answer did not seem forthcoming.
There was no good blinking the matter; the fact was obvious; the girl
was hopelessly and utterly compromised; and he, aided certainly by
untoward circumstances--for the sardonic interference of which, in
such circumstances, a man of sense usually allows--he had done it.
They had had their "holiday," without taking thought for the morrow,
in the way approved by boys and dogs and creatures without experience.
And here was to-morrow, knocking at the door and demanding the
price--as experience showed that it usually did. The question was, who
was going to pay, he or she? She had taken it upon herself as a matter
of course; it seemed natural to her that the burden should be the
woman's, but it did not seem so to him; among his people it was the
man who was expected, and who himself expected, to pay.
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