I went to a shop in Potterston
and asked the man to lend me fifty dollars on them all, so he did. It
was very good of him."
"You seem to consider everybody you meet kind and good," Stephen said.
"Yes, they almost always have been so to me. If you believe people are
going to be good, it _makes_ them good, unless they're very bad indeed."
"Perhaps." Stephen would not for a great deal have tried to undermine
her confidence in her fellow beings, and such was the power of the
girl's personality, that for the moment he was half inclined to feel she
might be right. Who could tell? Maybe he had not "believed" enough--in
Margot. He looked with interest at the brooch of which Miss Ray spoke, a
curiously wrought, flattened ring of dull gold, with a pin in the middle
which pierced and fastened her chiffon veil on her breast. Round the
edge, irregularly shaped pearls alternated with roughly cut emeralds,
and there was a barbaric beauty in both workmanship and colour.
"What happened when you got to your journey's end?" he went on, fearing
to go astray on that subject of the world's goodness, which was a sore
point with him lately. "Did you know anybody in New York?"
"Nobody. But I asked the driver of a cab if he could take me to a
respectable theatrical boarding-house, and he said he could, so I told
him to drive me there. I engaged a wee back room at the top of the
house, and paid a week in advance.
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