uality of some sort.
And in spite of everything and anything, except death or
hopeless disease, that individuality will insist upon
expressing itself."

"Mine is expressing itself," said she with a light smile--the
smile of a light woman.

"You can't rest in this present life of yours. Your
individuality is too strong. It will have its way--and for all
your mocking smiling, you know I am right. I understand how
you were tempted into it----"

She opened her lips--changed her mind and stopped her lips
with her cigarette.

"I don't blame you--and it was just as well. This life has
taught you--will teach you--will advance you in your
career. . . . Tell me, what gave you the idea that I was
disappointed?"

She tossed her cigarette into the big ash tray. "As I told
you, it is too late." She rose and looked at him with a
strange, sweet smile. "I've got any quantity of faults," said
she. "But there's one I haven't got. I don't whine."

"You don't whine," assented he, "and you don't lie--and you
don't shirk. Men and women have been canonized for less.
I understand that for some reason you can't talk about----"

"Then why do you continue to press me?" said she, a little coldly.

He accepted the rebuke with a bow. "Nevertheless," said he,
with raillery to carry off his persistence, "I shall get you.
If not sooner, then when the specter of an obscure--perhaps
poor--old age begins to agitate the rich hangings of youth's
banquet hall."

"That'll be a good many years yet," mocked she. And from her
lovely young face flashed the radiant defiance of her perfect
youth and health.

"Years that pass quickly," retorted he, unmoved.

She was still radiant, still smiling, but once more she was
seeing the hideous old women of the tenements. Into her
nostrils stole the stench of the foul den in which she had
slept with Mrs. Tucker and Mrs. Reardon--and she was hearing
the hunchback of the dive playing for the drunken dancing old
cronies, with their tin cups of whiskey.

No danger of that now? How little she was saving of her
salary from Palmer! She could not "work" men--she simply
could not. She would never put by enough to be independent
and every day her tastes for luxury had firmer hold upon her.
No danger? As much danger as ever--a danger postponed but
certain to threaten some day--and then, a fall from a greater
height--a certain fall. She was hearing the battered,
shattered piano of the dive.

"For