sked Blinker, clenching his teeth.

"Sure. All men do. You know that."

"Do you allow them?"

"Some. Not many. They won't take you out anywhere unless you do."

She turned her head and looked searchingly at Blinker. Her eyes
were as innocent as a child's. There was a puzzled look in them,
as though she did not understand him.

"What's wrong about my meeting fellows?" she asked, wonderingly.

"Everything," he answered, almost savagely. "Why don't you entertain
your company in the house where you live? Is it necessary to pick up
Tom, Dick and Harry on the streets?"

She kept her absolutely ingenuous eyes upon his. "If you could see
the place where I live you wouldn't ask that. I live in Brickdust
Row. They call it that because there's red dust from the bricks
crumbling over everything. I've lived there for more than four
years. There's no place to receive company. You can't have anybody
come to your room. What else is there to do? A girl has got to meet
the men, hasn't she?"

"Yes," he said, hoarsely. "A girl has got to meet a--has got to meet
the men."

"The first time one spoke to me on the street," she continued, "I
ran home and cried all night. But you get used to it. I meet a good
many nice fellows at church. I go on rainy days and stand in the
vestibule until one comes up with an umbrella. I wish there was a
parlor, so I could ask you to call, Mr. Blinker--are you really sure
it isn't 'Smith,' now?"

The boat landed safely. Blinker had a confused impression of walking
with the girl through quiet crosstown streets until she stopped at a
corner and held out her hand.

"I live just one more block over," she said. "Thank you for a very
pleasant afternoon."

Blinker muttered something and plunged northward till he found a
cab. A big, gray church loomed slowly at his right. Blinker shook
his fist at it through the window.

"I gave you a thousand dollars last, week," he cried under his
breath, "and she meets them in your very doors. There is something
wrong; there is something wrong."

At eleven the next day Blinker signed his name thirty times with a
new pen provided by Lawyer Oldport.

"Now let me go to the woods," he said surlily.

"You are not looking well," said Lawyer Oldport. "The trip will do
you good. But listen, if you will, to that little matter of business
of which I spoke to you yesterday, and also five years ago. There
are some buildings, fifteen in number, of which there are new
five-y