rtaining and being entertained, poverty becomes a hell. In the
country, in the quiet towns, the innocent people wonder at the
greediness of the more comfortable kinds of city people, at their love
of money, their incessant dwelling upon it, their reverence for those
who have it, their panic-like flight from those who have it not. They
wonder how folk, apparently human, can be so inhuman. Let them be
careful how they judge. If you discover any human being anywhere acting
as you think a human being should not, investigate all the
circumstances, look thoroughly into all the causes of his or her
conduct, before you condemn him or her as inhuman, unworthy of your
kinship and your sympathy.

In her brief letter the girl showed that, young though she was and not
widely experienced in life, she yet had seen the horrors of city
poverty, how it poisons and kills all the fine emotions. She had seen
many a loving young couple start out confidently, with a few hundred
dollars of debt for furniture--had seen the love fade and wither,
shrivel, die--had seen appear peevishness and hatred and unfaithfulness
and all the huge, foul weeds that choke the flowers of married life. She
knew what her lover's salary would buy--and what it would not buy--for
two. She could imagine their fate if there should be three or more. She
showed frankly her selfishness of renunciation. But there could be read
between the lines--concealed instead of vaunted--perhaps
unsuspected--her unselfishness of renunciation for the sake of her lover
and for the sake of the child or the children that might be. In our love
of moral sham and glitter, we overlook the real beauties of human
morality; we even are so dim or vulgar sighted that we do not see them
when they are shown to us.

As Norman awakened, he reached for the telephone, said to the boy in
charge of the club exchange: "Look in the book, find the number of a
lawyer named Branscombe, and connect me with his office." After some
confusion and delay he got the right office, but Dorothy was out at
lunch. He left a message that she was to call him up at the club as soon
as she came in. He was shaving when the bell rang.

He was at the receiver in a bound. "Is it you?" he said.

"Yes," came in her quiet, small voice.

"Will you resign down there to-day? Will you marry me this afternoon?"

A brief silence, then--"Yes."

Thus it came about that they met at the City Hall license bureau, got
their license, and h