again the long list of hotels
confused her. She did not know one from the other; she shrank from
experimenting; and, at least, she knew something about the Aurora
Borealis and she would not feel like an utter stranger there.

That was the only reason she went back there _that_ time. And the next
time she came to town that was the principal reason she returned to the
Aurora Borealis. But the next time, she made up her mind to go elsewhere;
and in the roaring street she turned coward, and went to the only place
she knew. And the time after that she fought a fierce little combat with
herself all the way down in the train; and, with flushed cheeks, hating
herself, ordered the cabman to take her to the Hotel Aurora Borealis.

But it was not until several trips after that one--on a rainy morning in
May--that she found courage to say to the maid at the cloak-room door:

"Who _is_ that young man? I always see him in the lobby when I come
here."

The maid cast an intelligent glance toward a tall, well-built young
fellow who stood pulling on his gloves near the desk.

"Huh!" she sniffed; "he ain't much."

"What do you mean?" asked the girl.

"Why, he's a capper, mem."

"A--a what?"

"A capper--a gambler."

The girl flushed scarlet. The maid handed her a check for her rain-coat
and said: "They hang around swell hotels, they do, and pick up
acquaintance with likely looking and lonely boobs. Then the first thing
the lonely boob knows he's had a good dinner with a new acquaintance and
is strolling into a quiet but elegant looking house in the West Forties
or Fifties." And the maid laughed, continuing her deft offices in the
dressing-room, and the girl looked into the glass at her own crimson
cheeks and sickened eyes.

At luncheon he sat at a little table by a window, alone, indolently
preoccupied with a newspaper and a fruit salad. She, across the room,
kept her troubled eyes away. Yet it was as though she saw him--perhaps
the mental embodiment of him was the more vivid for her resolutely
averted head.

Every detail of his appearance was painfully familiar to her--his dark
eyes, his smooth face which always seemed a trifle sun-tanned, the
fastidious and perfect taste of his dress in harmony with his boyish
charm and quiet distinction--and the youth of him--the wholesome and
self-possessed youth--that seemed to her the most dreadful thing about
him in the new light of her knowledge. For he could scarcely be
twenty-fiv