on with other women had been tame beside his new friendship
with her. She had suffered, felt, lived. She fascinated him, as often
over the books they would stop to talk, talk of things the most
irrelevant, yet to him the most interesting, until she would bring him
back inevitably to the point of their work and start him again with a
new power and incentive toward the purpose she had in mind.

To Constance he seemed to fill a blank spot in her empty life. If she
had been bitter toward the world for what had happened to her, the
pleasure of helping another to beat that harsh world seemed an
unspeakably sweet compensation.

At last even Constance herself began to realize it. It was not, after
all, merely the bitterness toward society, that lured her on. She was
not a woman carved out of a block of stone. There was a sweetness about
this association that carried her along as if in a dream. She was
actually falling in love with him.

One day she had been working later than usual. The accountant had shown
signs of approaching the end of his task sooner than they had expected.
Murray was waiting, as was his custom, for her to finish before he left.

There was no sound in the almost deserted office building save the
banging of a door echoing now and then, or an insistent ring of the
elevator bell as an anxious office boy or stenographer sought to escape
after an extra period of work.

Murray stood looking at her admiringly as she deftly shoved the pins
into her hat. Then he held her coat, which brought them close together.

"It will soon be time for the final scene," he remarked. His manner was
different as he looked down at her. "We must succeed, Constance," he
went on slowly. "Of course, after it is over, it will be impossible for
me to remain here with this company. I have been looking around. I
must--we must clear ourselves. I already have an offer to go with
another company, much better than this position in every way--honest,
square, with no dirty work, such as I have had here."

It was a moment that Constance had foreseen, without planning what she
would do. She moved to the door as if to go.

"Take dinner with me to-night at the Riverside," he went on, mentioning
the name of a beautifully situated inn uptown overlooking the lights of
the Hudson and thronged by gay parties of pleasure seekers.

Before she could say no, even though she would have said it, he had
linked his arm in hers, banged shut the door and th