"I have. Alice wants you to give up this--this business----"
"If that is all," interrupted Doris, hotly, "you might have saved yourself the trouble of coming here."
"Don’t say that! Listen to me. No doubt you are angry because I come here, as I came before to express my disapproval of the whole affair. I feel it my duty to do so. It is a prostitution of Art--a robbery in her name----"
"Stay!" interrupted Doris, passionately. "I know what you think it, and I know also what I think of your speaking to me like this! You may lecture your sister and do what you please with her, but is it any business of yours--I mean, what right have you to come here to find fault with _my_ work? As I was saying to Mrs. Austin when you----"
"Yes, intruded," she went on, with severity, "upstairs, it is no business of yours."
"I think it is," he said, more gently. "You are Alice’s friend, and I do not wish my sister to associate intimately with one who----"
"If I am not fit for your sister’s society----" began Doris, furiously.
"Don’t you think it is a pity for us to quarrel in this way?" Mr. Sinclair said, in a calm manner. "Please sit down, and let us talk calmly and reasonably." He again waved his hand towards the chair which he had placed for her.
Doris sat down rather helplessly. How he dominated her! She felt as if she were a little child, who did not know what to say in the presence of a grown-up person.
"My sister is extremely attached to you," said the artist, his rich voice full of feeling and his grey eyes shining as they looked straight into Doris’s, as if they would read her soul. "She thinks that no one in the world is like her friend. Nothing that one can say--I mean that one can do--that is, that can be done--has any power to shake her loyalty to you----"
"Ah! You have been trying to estrange her from me----"
"I will not deny your charge," said the other, "for there is some truth in it. I do not wish my sister to see much of one who, for money--mere money--is content to do that which is wrong. The love of money is the root of all evil."
"And you think," exclaimed Doris, "you think _I_ love money? You think that for money I am content to do wrong?"
"You are exceedingly uncharitable," cried the girl, bitterly, "to beg the question in this way! Let me say that, in the first place, I do not love money. That I want to earn as much of it as possible is true; but I do not want the money for myself. It is to help to pay a debt, a debt of honour so large that it is not possible for me to pay it all; but if I can in time pay a few hundreds of pounds, I shall be very glad."