rdily on with his meal. When he was alone in his bare and austere
room on the top floor he took out Jane's letter and read it again, slowly
and with thankful care.

I've decided to forgive you, Michael Daragh, it began, but it takes a
bit of doing! It's easy enough to forgive any one for being in the
wrong; that's a really pleasant and soothing sensation; but to pardon
you for being in the right--that's taken me all these hours! I said
that you always saw life through a stained-glass window and that it
gave you distorted values, didn't I? That was temper, pure and
simple. You were perfectly right to wail like one of your own
Banshees because the likes of me--once content when the pale shadow
of Pegasus passed her by--is become an ink-spattered, carbon-grimed
gold digger! Ten months ago, shivering and quivering over "ONE
CROWDED HOUR," I cowered back in my semi-occasional taxicab and
watched the meter with a creeping scalp.... Now I can ride from
Yonkers to the Square and admire the scenery all the way. But this
isn't what I intended to do. It's been warm, human, jolly sort of
work, knitting up the spatted broker in the box to the newsboy in the
gallery and I've adored it, but I've lost my way, Michael Daragh. It
isn't what I intended to do; it isn't what I intended to be; the dew
is drying on my dreams and my soul shrieks S.O.S.!

For the first time in my snug, smug life I've had large chunks of
truth told me; I didn't like it. I don't _enjoy_ it even yet, but
I've arrived at the decent stage of gratitude, Michael Daragh. Thank
you--and good-by. Shall I send you bulletins of my pilgrim progress?
I'm off to a lean, clean island in Maine, to live on eight dollars a
week and snare back the thing I lost.

JANE VAIL.

Thereafter, Mrs. Hills and Emma Ellis were to see and to marvel over the
creamy buff envelopes which came to the Irishman, now thin, now thick,
postmarked in Maine, often only two or three days apart, never less
frequently than once a week. The boarding-house keeper had her own
pleasant little note, occasionally, and Emma Ellis had three
conscientious picture postcards, but it was to Michael Daragh that the
letters came in a steady stream.

"Mark my words," said Mrs. Hills, "there's nothing in it. My land, he's
as offhand about 'em as if they were circulars, and I don't believe he
answers one in six."

"Ye