ver really suffer anything of what she suffered? Never, for always I
knew that at any minute I could turn from a poor girl into a rich one,
throw my book in the faces of those who refused to buy it, and telephone
my anxious family. They did come on and try to get me away--once. I went
with them--for the day. It was the day you met me. And always there was
the interest of the adventure. It was an adventure, you know, a big
one."

"I should say it was. And when you were at the hospital--"

"Accepting expensive rooms and free medical attendance--oh, wasn't I a
fraud? How I felt it I can never tell you. But I could--and did--send
back Doctor Burns a draft in part payment, though I thought he would
never imagine where it came from. He did, though. What do you suppose he
told me last night when we were driving home?--this morning it was, of
course."

"I can't guess," King admitted, suffering a distinct and poignant pang
of jealousy at thought of Red Pepper Burns driving through the night
with this girl, on an errand of mercy though it had been.

"He told me," she said slowly, "that he learned all about me while I was
in the hospital. One night, when I was at the worst, he sent Miss Arden
out for a rest and sat beside me himself. And in my foolish, delirious
wanderings I gave him the whole story, or enough of it so that he pieced
out the rest. And he never told a soul, not even his wife; wasn't that
wonderful of him? And treated me exactly the same as if he didn't
practically know I wasn't what I seemed. You see, I wasn't far enough
away from that poor girl's suicide, when I was so ill last year, but
that it was always in my mind. Even yet I dream of it at times."

They were entering a large manufacturing town, the streets in the early
morning full of factory operatives on their way to work, dinner-pails in
hands and shawls over heads. Anne drove carefully, often throwing a
smile at a group of children or slowing down more than the law decreed
to avoid making some weary-faced woman hurry. And when at length she
drew up before a dingy brick tenement house, of a type the most
unpromising, King discovered that her "friend" was one of these very
people.

He carried the hamper up two flights of ramshackle stairs and set it
inside the door she indicated. Then he unwillingly withdrew to the car,
where he sat waiting--and wondering. It was not long he had to wait, in
point of time, but his impatience was growing upon him. All th