fork. Tears sprang into her eyes,--tears of
anger, he thought.

"Say, it's no use trying to put up a bluff with me," she cried.

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"You know what I mean, all right. What did you come in here for,
anyway?"

"I don't know--I couldn't tell you," he answered.

The very honesty of his words seemed, for an instant, to disconcert her;
and she produced a torn lace handkerchief, which she thrust in her eyes.

"Why can't you leave me alone?" she demanded. "I'm all right."

If he did not at once reply, it was because of some inner change which
had taken place in himself; and he seemed to see things, suddenly,
in their true proportions. He no longer feared a scene and its
consequences. By virtue of something he had cast off or taken on, he was
aware of a newly acquired mastery of the situation, and by a hidden and
unconscious process he had managed to get at the real woman behind the
paint: had beaten down, as it were without a siege, her defences. And he
was incomparably awed by the sight of her quivering, frightened self.

Her weeping grew more violent. He saw the people at the next table
turn and stare, heard the men laughing harshly. For the spectacle was
evidently not an uncommon one here. She pushed away her unfinished
glass, gathered up her velvet bag and rose abruptly.

"I guess I ain't hungry after all," she said, and started toward the
door. He turned to the waiter, who regarded him unmoved, and asked for a
check.

"I'll get it," he said.

Hodder drew out a ten dollar bill, and told him to keep the change. The
waiter looked at him. Some impulse moved him to remark, as he picked up
the rector's hat:

"Don't let her put it over you, sir."

Hodder scarcely heard him. He hurried up the steps and gained the
pavement, and somewhere in the black shadows beyond the arc-lights
he saw her disappearing down the street. Careless of all comment he
hastened on, overtook her, and they walked rapidly side by side. Now and
again he heard a sob, but she said nothing. Thus they came to the house
where the Garvins had lived, and passed it, and stopped in front of the
dimly lighted vestibule of the flats next door. In drawing the key from
her bag she dropped it: he picked it up and put it in the lock himself.
She led the way without comment up the darkened stairs, and on the
landing produced another key, opened the door of her rooms, fumbled for
the electric button, and suddenly the place was fl