ough she lived with Nick,
her husband, she still occupied herself at times with her old
occupation; and, as ever, she watched Marie with a careful eye, rather
vainly so just then, for this girl was as wild as a girl well could be.

One day Terry paid one of his infrequent visits to his brother's home,
and saw the plump and pretty Marie hanging clothes in the yard. He was
at once attracted to her, and entered into conversation. He was deeply
pleased; so was the girl; and they made an appointment. He soon saw what
her character was, and this was to him an added attraction.

"I had been looking for a girl like Marie," he said, "for several years.
I had made one or two trials, and they always got me into trouble with
my family. But the other girls did not make good. They were too weak and
conventional and could not stand the pace of life with me. I had early
formed a contempt for the matrimonial relation. Five years I had nursed
my rebellion and waited for a chance to use it. As soon as I met Marie I
felt I had met one of my own kind. It was partly the fierce charm of a
social experiment, the love for the proletarian and the outcast; for I
felt Marie was essentially that. This element of my interest in her
Marie never understood--this unconscious propaganda, as it were. She
thought it was all sex and wanted it so."

Katie saw that Terry was making up to her beloved Marie, and tried to
prevent their meetings; but in vain; the attraction was too strong.
Katie blackguarded Terry on every occasion, until she finally saw it was
hopeless, and then invited him into her house to meet the girl. There he
began to go frequently and the intimacy grew. Nick warned Terry against
the girl on account of her loose character. "I have often found her," he
said, "misconducting herself with some fellow or other. Why, she does so
with everybody. Only this evening I found her on the front door-step
with young Bladen. She is not the kind for you to be serious about.
Everybody knows how common she is."

Nick did not understand that an argument of that kind tended only to
confirm Terry in his interest in Marie. Terry answered him laconically:
"That's all right, Nick. When you don't want her, just send her to me."

Nick, as we have seen, was jealous of Marie, because of Katie's love for
her; so he fomented trouble between the two women. Katie, too, was at
this time more exasperated with the girl's conduct than she had ever
been before; and they h