retorted. "You want me to
crawl to those people for a few wretched louis, and you're too selfish
to stick by me through it all. I've told you I'd go, if you'd go with
me."

"I won't!" Eve flung at him. "You ought to be ashamed to ask it. Coward!
He's brought us to this, and now he's afraid to do the one thing that
can help."

"Please, please, let me go away," pleaded Mary, sick with shame for
both, and for herself because she was a witness of the scene. "I
oughtn't to be hearing this. I--unless I can do some good----"

"_You_ can go with him, if you want to do good," Eve cut her short
almost savagely. "I'm broken--done! But you--you've nothing to ask them
for yourself. You might see him through, if he's too weak to go alone.
We're down, both of us, in the mud; but you're high up in the world.
You're of importance now. Maybe they'd do for you what they wouldn't for
one of us."

"I don't know what you mean. I'm in the dark."

"How could she know?" Dauntrey asked his wife, controlling his rage.

"We've lost everything in this beautiful hell," Eve explained sullenly.
"Haven't you heard any news of us this last week?"

"No, nothing--nothing."

"It began with a row at a hotel," Eve went on. "I lost my temper--I had
the best excuse--but I struck a woman who dared to cut me. There was a
scene. Then all the people who were left at our house turned against us
and walked off the same day----"

"Yet she says everything is my fault!" Dauntrey threw out his hands with
a disclaiming gesture.

"Hold your tongue!" Eve shrilled at him, seeming to care no more than a
wounded animal for the astonished stares of passers-by. It was only
Dauntrey who made some poor attempt to cloak and screen the squalor of
their quarrel. "What I say is true. Everything _is_ your fault. Who
gambled away the money I made, slaving in the house, taking boarders and
trying to hold my head up? It was for your sake I worked; and now you
refuse to do your part, yet you expect me to keep on loving you."

"Oh, don't, don't!" Mary pleaded. "I'll go with him, anywhere you want
me to go."

Instantly Eve became calmer. "Will you do the thing if she stands by
you?" she asked her husband.

"Yes," he answered, dully.

"Then for heaven's sake start at once, before you change your mind. I'll
wait for you here, on a seat. I must sit down or I shall drop."

"Wouldn't you rather go home if--if I ordered you a cab?" Mary
suggested. "You will be so cold--so mise