be on the outside. Should
he therefore drop her arm and change over? And if he did so, would he
have to repeat the manoeuvre the next time? And the next? There was
something wrong about it, and he resolved not to caper about and play the
fool. Yet he was not satisfied with his conclusion, and when he found
himself on the inside, he talked quickly and earnestly, making a show of
being carried away by what he was saying, so that, in case he was wrong
in not changing sides, his enthusiasm would seem the cause for his
carelessness.

As they crossed Broadway, he came face to face with a new problem. In
the blaze of the electric lights, he saw Lizzie Connolly and her giggly
friend. Only for an instant he hesitated, then his hand went up and his
hat came off. He could not be disloyal to his kind, and it was to more
than Lizzie Connolly that his hat was lifted. She nodded and looked at
him boldly, not with soft and gentle eyes like Ruth's, but with eyes that
were handsome and hard, and that swept on past him to Ruth and itemized
her face and dress and station. And he was aware that Ruth looked, too,
with quick eyes that were timid and mild as a dove's, but which saw, in a
look that was a flutter on and past, the working-class girl in her cheap
finery and under the strange hat that all working-class girls were
wearing just then.

"What a pretty girl!" Ruth said a moment later.

Martin could have blessed her, though he said:-

"I don't know. I guess it's all a matter of personal taste, but she
doesn't strike me as being particularly pretty."

"Why, there isn't one woman in ten thousand with features as regular as
hers. They are splendid. Her face is as clear-cut as a cameo. And her
eyes are beautiful."

"Do you think so?" Martin queried absently, for to him there was only one
beautiful woman in the world, and she was beside him, her hand upon his
arm.

"Do I think so? If that girl had proper opportunity to dress, Mr. Eden,
and if she were taught how to carry herself, you would be fairly dazzled
by her, and so would all men."

"She would have to be taught how to speak," he commented, "or else most
of the men wouldn't understand her. I'm sure you couldn't understand a
quarter of what she said if she just spoke naturally."

"Nonsense! You are as bad as Arthur when you try to make your point."

"You forget how I talked when you first met me. I have learned a new
language since then. Before that time I