st, frightened, fixed: "We always played together, and I
thought here in the city we could be such good friends, with all the
different new things to do together--why, I wanted us to go to
Chinatown and theaters, and I would have been so glad to pay my share.
I've just been waiting and hoping you would ask me, and I wanted us to
play and see--oh! so many different new things together--it would have
been so sweet, so sweet----We were good friends at first, and then
you--you didn't want to come here any more and----Oh, I couldn't help
seeing it; more and more and more and _more_ I've been seeing it; but
I didn't want to see it; but now I can't fool myself any more. I was
so lonely till you came to-night, and when you spoke about
tramping----And then it seemed like you just went away from me again."

"Why, Gertie, you didn't seem----"

"----and long ago I really saw it, the day we walked in the Park and I
was wicked about trying to make you call me 'Eltruda'--oh, Carl dear,
indeed you needn't call me that or anything you don't like--and I
tried to make you say I had a temperament. And about Adelaide and all.
And you went away and I thought you would come back to me that
evening--oh, I wanted you to come, so much, and you didn't even
'phone--and I waited up till after midnight, hoping you would 'phone,
I kept thinking surely you would, and you never did, you never did;
and I listened and listened for the 'phone to ring, and every time
there was a noise----But it never was you. It never rang at all...."

She dropped back in the Morris chair, her eyes against the cushion,
her hair disordered, both her hands gripping the left arm of the
chair, her sobs throat-catching and long--throb-throb-throb in the
death-still air.

Carl stared at her, praying for a chance to escape. Then he felt an
instinct prompting him to sob with her. Pity, embarrassment, disgust,
mingled with his alarm. He became amazed that Gertie, easy-going
Gertie Cowles, had any passion at all; and indignant that it was
visited upon himself.

But he had to help. He moved to her chair and, squatting boyishly on
its arm, stroked her hair, begging: "Gertie, Gertie, I did mean to
come up, that night. Indeed I did, honey. I would have come up, but I
met some friends--couldn't break away from them all evening." A chill
ran between his shoulder-blades. It was a shock to the pride he took
in Ruth's existence. The evening in question had found Ruth for him!
It seemed