turned away
from him she was smiling.

"Yes. I'd like a cup of tea," she said after a moment of deliberation.

He didn't very well know this part of the city, but he remembered a
restaurant he had once gone to with Flynn, the very one, it seems,
where I had taken refuge. And there they were, looking at each other
across the table, the girl, as Jerry expressed it, a little demure, a
little quizzical, possibly a little upon the defensive, but friendly
enough. If she hadn't been friendly, he argued, most properly, she
wouldn't have come with him.

"I can't seem to think it's really you," Jerry began after he had
given his order. "You're different somehow--soberer and a little
pale."

"Am I?"

"Yes, I can't think just how I expected you to look in New York. Of
course, you wouldn't wear leather gaiters, or carry a butterfly net.
There aren't any butterflies in the Bowery, are there?"

"No--no butterflies." She paused a moment. "Only moths with singed
wings."

She examined him furtively, but he was frankly puzzled.

"Moths--! I don't think I understand."

"Yes--moths--I--I spend a good deal of my time at the Blank Street
Mission."

"And what is that?"

She gazed for a moment at him wide-eyed.

"A home--a refuge," she went on haltingly, "for--for women in trouble.
They're the moths--bewildered by the lights of the town--they--they
singe their wings and then we try to help them."

"It's great of you, Una."

"And what do you do with _your_ time?" she broke in quickly. "Whom
have you met? Is the riddle of existence easier for you in New York
than at Horsham Manor?"

"No," he blurted out. "I don't understand it at all. I'm always making
the most absurd mistakes. I'm fearfully stupid. Do you ever use rouge,
Una?"

The suddenness of the question took her aback, but in a second she
was smiling in spite of herself.

"No, I don't, Jerry. But lots of girls do. It's the fashion."

"I know, but do you approve of it?"

"It's very effective if not overdone," she evaded.

"But do you approve of it?" he insisted.

"There's no harm in it, is there? I'd wear it if I wanted to."

"But you don't want to."

"No. Why do you want to know?"

But he didn't seem to hear her question.

"Do you drink cocktails? Or smoke cigarettes?"

"No. I don't like cocktails. Besides they're not served at the
Mission. We think they might create false notions of the purposes of
the organization."

He didn't laugh.

"But surely