Joan Tregenza went home in a dream that day. She did not know where to
begin thinking. "Mister Jan" had told her so many astounding things; and
her own heart, too, had made bold utterances--concerning matters which she
had crushed out of sight with some shame and many secret blushes until now.
But, seen in the light of John Barron's revelations, this emotion which she
had thrust so resolutely to the back of her mind could remain there no
more. It arose strong, rampant and ridiculous; only from her point of view
no humor distinguished it. This man, then, was like herself, made of the
same flesh and blood, sprung from the people. That fact, though possessing
absolutely no significance whatever in reality, struck Joan with great
force. Her highly primitive instincts stretched a wide gulf between the
thing called "gentleman" and other men; which was the result of training
from parents of the old-fashioned sort, whose world lay outside and behind
the modern spirit; who had reached the highest development of their
intelligence and formed their opinions before the passing of the Education
Act. Gray Michael naturally held the great ones of the earth as objects of
pity from an eternal standpoint, but birth weighed with him, and, in
temporal concerns, he treated his superiors with all respect and civility
when rare chance brought him into contact with them. He viewed uneasily the
last outcome of progress and the vastly increased facilities for
instruction of the juvenile population. The age was sufficiently godless,
in his judgment; and he had found that a Board School education was the
first nail in the coffin of every young man's faith.

Joan, therefore, allowing nothing for the value of riches, of education, of
intellect, was content to accept Barron's own cynical statement in a spirit
widely different from the speaker's. He had sneered at himself, just as he
had sneered at his own dead father. But Joan missed all the bitterness of