l deeds.

She had not realized until Sprudell had told her of his death how
strongly she had counted upon him. He was the only one left to her of
her own blood, and had been the single means of escape that she could
see from the exhausting, uncongenial grind and the long, lonely hours in
the shabby hotel when her work was done. If the future had looked dark
and hopeless before, how much worse it seemed with illness staring her
in the face!

The money Freddie had left her would have gone a long way toward the
vacation after she had used the larger part of it to pay off a
long-standing obligation which her mother had incurred. The thought of
the money reminded her of the letter and photograph. She brushed her wet
cheeks with her hand and getting up took the soiled and yellowing
envelope from the bureau drawer, wondering again why his murderer had
sent it back.

The quick tears came once more as she read the ingenuous scrawl! What
centuries ago it seemed since she had written that! She bit her lip hard
but in spite of herself she cried--for her lost illusions--for her
mother--for that optimistic outlook upon life which never would come
back. She had learned much since that smiling "pitcher" was taken--what
"mortgages" mean, for instance--that poverty has more depressing depths
than the lack of servants and horses, and that "marrying well," as she
interpreted a successful marriage then, is seldom--outside of "fiction
and Pittsburgh"--for the girl who earns her own living. Young men who
inherit incomes or older men of affairs do not look in shops and offices
for their wives. Helen Dunbar had no hallucinations on this score.

Propinquity, clothes, social backing, the necessary adjuncts to
"marrying well," had not been among her advantages for many years. There
remained on her horizon only the friendly youths of mediocre attainments
that she met in her daily life. She liked them individually and
collectively in business, but socially, outside of the office, they made
no appeal.

Ill-health was a misfortune she never had considered. It was a new
spectre, the worst of all. If one were well one could always do
something even without much talent, but helpless, dependent--the dread
which filled her as she walked up and down the narrow confines of her
room was different from the vague fears of the inexperienced. Hers came
from actual knowledge and observation obtained in the wide scope of her
newspaper life. The sordid straits