he exclaimed.

"You! Why shouldn't you?" she cried fiercely.

"There's hardly a man in that place that wouldn't have been. They all
know me by sight--and some of 'em better. You didn't see 'em grinning
when I came up to you, but I did. My God--it's awful--it's awful I...."
She burst into violent weeping, long deferred.

He took her hand in his, and did not speak, waiting for the fit to spend
itself.... And after a while the convulsive shudders that shook her
gradually ceased.

"You must trust me," he said. "The first thing tomorrow I'm going to
make arrangements for you to get out of these rooms. You can't stay here
any longer."

"That's sure," she answered, trying to smile. "I'm broke. I even owe the
co--the policeman."

"The policeman!"

"He has to turn it in to Tom Beatty and the politicians"

Beatty! Where had he heard the name? Suddenly it came to him that Beatty
was the city boss, who had been eulogized by Mr. Plimpton!

"I have some good friends who will be glad to help you to get work--and
until you do get work. You will have to fight--but we all have to fight.
Will you try?"

"Sure, I'll try," she answered, in a low voice.

Her very tone of submission troubled him. And he had a feeling that, if
he had demanded, she would have acquiesced in anything.

"We'll talk it over to-morrow," he went on, clinging to his note of
optimism. "We'll find out what you can do easiest, to begin with."

"I might give music lessons," she suggested.

The remark increased his uneasiness, for he recognized in it a sure
symptom of disease--a relapse into what might almost have been called
levity, blindness to the supreme tragedy of her life which but a moment
before had shaken and appalled her. He shook his head bravely.

"I'm afraid that wouldn't do--at first."

She rose and went into the other room, returning in a few moments with
a work basket, from which she drew a soiled and unfinished piece of
embroidery.

"There's a bureau cover I started when I was at Pratt's," she said, as
she straightened it over her knees. "It's a copy of an expensive one. I
never had the patience to finish it, but one of the sales-ladies there,
who was an expert, told me it was pretty good: She taught me the stitch,
and I had a notion at that time I might make a little money for dresses
and the theatre. I was always clever with my hands."

"The very thing!" he said, with hopeful emphasis. "I'm sure I can get
you plenty of it to do. A