my poor heart was bled dry long, long ago. I'm
a busy man, too--busy and a little tired."

"I deserve it all," said she. "I've brought it on myself.
And I'm not a bit sorry I started the subject. I've found out
you're quite human--and that'll help me to work better."

They separated with the smiling faces of those who have added
an evening altogether pleasant to memory's store of the past's
happy hours--that roomy storehouse which is all too empty even
where the life has been what is counted happy. He insisted on
sending her home in his auto, himself taking a taxi to the
Players' where the supper was given. The moment she was alone
for the short ride home, her gayety evaporated like a
delicious but unstable perfume.

Why? Perhaps it was the sight of the girls on the stroll.
Had she really been one of them?--and only a few days ago?
Impossible! Not she not the real self . . . and perhaps she
would be back there with them before long. No--never, never,
in any circumstances!. . . She had said, "Never!" the first
time she escaped from the tenements, yet she had gone back. . .
were any of those girls strolling along--were, again, any of
them Freddie Palmer's? At the thought she shivered and
quailed. She had not thought of him, except casually, in many
months. What if he should see her, should still feel
vengeful--he who never forgot or forgave--who would dare
anything! And she would be defenseless against him. . . . She
remembered what she had last read about him in the newspaper.
He had risen in the world, was no longer in the criminal class
apparently, had moved to the class of semi-criminal wholly
respectable contractor-politician. No, he had long since
forgotten her, vindictive Italian though he was.

The auto set her down at home. Her tremors about Freddie
departed; but the depression remained. She felt physically as
if she had been sitting all evening in a stuffy room with a
dull company after a heavy, badly selected dinner. She fell
easy prey to one of those fits of the blues to which all
imaginative young people are at least occasional victims, and
by which those cursed and hampered with the optimistic
temperament are haunted and harassed and all but or quite
undone. She had a sense of failure, of having made a bad
impression. She feared he, recalling and reinspecting what
she had said, would get the idea that she was not in earnest,
was merely looking for a lover--for a chance to lead a l