r my room. I'll move!"

"I wish you would," remarked Harvey, when the door opened at last. "Move a
little faster when you do condescend to open the door. Come, Miss
Rivers--up this way."

And the lady of the beer mug and the gentleman of the pipe stared at each
other, and at the white vision of girlhood going up the dark, bad-smelling
stairway.

"Well, that's a new sort in this castle," remarked the man. "Do you guess
the riddle of it?"

The woman did not answer, but listened to the footsteps as they went along
the hall. Then a door opened and shut.

"They've gone to Goldie's room," she said. "That's queer. Goldie ain't the
sort to have very high-toned friends, so it can't be a long-lost sister,"
and she smiled contemptuously.

"She's a beauty, anyway, and I'm going to see her when she makes her exit,
if I have to sit up all night."

"Oh! And what about the afterpiece?"

"To the devil with the afterpiece! It hasn't any angels in it."

Inside Goldie's room, a big Dutch blonde in a soiled blue wrapper sat by
the bed, and stared in open-mouthed surprise at the new-comers.

"Is it _you_ she's been askin' for?" she asked, bluntly.

But 'Tana did not reply, and Harvey got the blonde to the door, and
after a few whispered words, induced her to go out altogether, and closed
the door behind her.

"I thought you'd come," whispered the little woman on the bed. "I thought
the note would bring you. I saw you talk to him, and I dropped to the
game. You're square, too, ain't you? That's the kind I want now. That
swell who went for you is the right sort, too. I minded his face and
yours. But tell him to go out for a minute. It won't take long--to tell
you."

Harvey went, at a motion from 'Tana. She had not uttered a word yet. All
she could do was to stare in wonder at the wreck of a woman before her--a
painted wreck; for, even on her deathbed, the ghastly face was tinted with
rouge.

"I can't get well--doctor says," she continued. "There was a baby; it died
yesterday--three hours old; and I can't get well. But there is another one
I want to tell you of. You tell him. It is two years old. Here is the
address. Maybe he will take care of it for me. He was good-hearted--that's
why he married me; thought I was only a little girl without a home. Any
woman could fool him, for he thought all women were good. He thought I was
only a little girl; and I had been married three years before."

She smiled at the idea of that past