on, but I will answer your questions. As to who the girl
is who can dare to turn you down, you know very well she is not what you
think, or you wouldn't so much object to being turned down, as you call
it. As to pulling you on, you were the first to speak or, at any rate,
it was mutual, so you need not demand any explanation. What you really
want to know is why I don't want you now. If I were a man like you, I
suppose I should never even think of explaining to anyone why I happened
to change in feeling toward some persons, but as I'm a woman, it's
different. I must explain!'

"This speech I have no doubt made him angry, but his pride came to the
rescue and he said with a show of indifference: 'I was angry, it is
true, but only for a moment. It was irritating to me to have a girl like
you show the nerve to throw me down; for I'm not accustomed to associate
with your sort.'

"At this insolence my face flushed hotly and I opened my mouth to make
some indignant reply, but I thought better of it and only walked away,
laughing softly to myself. As I went away, I heard him mutter, 'What a
cat.'

"But, I imagine, he didn't forget me so easily. I have no doubt that the
girl with the red lips and deep dark eyes haunted him for a long time.
Who was this girl who had given herself to him once and only once? It is
this kind of a mystery that makes a man dream and dream and curse
himself.

"Probably for some time, as he joined the crowd at State and Madison
Streets, he hoped to see me as I passed, but all things come to an end
and his passion for me did, no doubt, too. But, in the routine course of
his club life, moments came, perhaps, when he thought of little Marie,
her red lips, deep eyes, and pale, pale face. I doubt if he ever told
this story to any of his boon companions."

CHAPTER V

_Marie's Salvation_

On account of the irregularity of her life, Marie lost job after job.
Her relations with her mother, never good, grew worse and worse. Her
profound need of experience, in which the demand of the senses and the
curiosity of the mind were equally represented, impelled her to act
after act of recklessness and abandon. But, as in almost all, perhaps
all, human beings, there was in her soul a need of justification--of
social justification, no matter how few persons constituted the
approving group.

The feeling that everybody was against her, that she was on the road to
being what the world calls an outcast, gave