f for weeks, but she did not dream that it
was anything which time and a little medicine would not cure. Now, he
had told her that she must leave the city--stop her work at once.

He advised the South or West--particularly the West--some place where it
was high and dry. How lovely--and so simple! Just stop work and start!
Why didn't he say St. Petersburg or the Arctic circle. With no income
save what she earned from week to week they were equally impossible.

She had come in time, he had assured her, but she must not delay. Filled
with consternation, sick with dread and horror of what she saw before
her, Helen walked slowly to her hotel, the shabby place where she had
found board and lodging within her means. She loathed it, everything
about it--its faded tawdry splendor, the flashy, egotistical theatrical
folk who frequented it, the salaried mediocrities who were "permanent"
like herself, the pretentious, badly cooked food; but as she climbed the
yellowish marble steps she thought despairingly that even this would be
beyond her reach some day.

If only Freddie were alive! There was a lump in her throat as she
removed her hat and looked at her pale face in the old-fashioned bureau
mirror in her room. She might have gone to him in such an emergency as
this--she had saved money enough to have managed that. He had been a bad
son and an utterly indifferent brother, but surely he would not have
turned her out.

Her shoulders drooped and two tears slipped from beneath her lashes as
she sat on the edge of her narrow bed with her hands lying passively in
her lap. Tears were so weak and futile in a world where only action
counted that it was seldom they ever reached her eyes, though they
sometimes came close.

Practical as Helen's life had made her in most things, she was still
young enough to build high hopes on a romantic improbability. And
nothing was more improbable than that "Slim" Naudain, even if he had
lived, ever would have returned to make amends.

But she had thrown the glamour of romance about her scapegrace brother
from the day he had flung out of the house in ignominy, boasting with
the arrogance of inexperience that he would succeed and come back
triumphant, to fill them with envy and chagrin. She never had heard from
him directly since, but she had kept her childish, unreasoning faith
that he would make good his boast and compensate her for her share of
the fortune which it had cost to save him from his evi