ger a dingy cell. She
had recognized Paul Burton's face out in front, and, as she changed for
the next act, little snatches of song broke from her lips, and she
smiled at herself in the glass until the small, glistening teeth flashed
like those of a pleased child.

Fate gives no guarantee of responsibility for the targeting of the
Love-God's darts. This whimsical deity seems to owe no duty to fitness
or consistency. He may choose to make a strong and excellent character
love one too weak to be worthy its thought and no higher power
intervenes. After all, Marcia had met Paul when she was lonely and they
had for a while comforted each other's unhappiness. When she had ordered
him to stay away the damage was already done, and since then she had
been infinitely more lonely--had craved more desperately companionship
with someone of the world from which her poverty had so long exiled her,
though its memories remained. Now he had disobeyed her and come to her.
He had sought her out contrary to command and that must mean that he had
found a new strength and would have something to say to her which a man
may worthily say to a woman. He had so thoroughly understood her edict
that his coming could have no other meaning. She could not know that he
was still actuated solely by his own selfish craving for comfort, nor
that he had occupied his time on the train countering and balancing
considerations until his sudden determination had oozed miserably out of
him. Although he could no longer awaken a throbbing of his pulses with
the thought of Loraine Haswell, neither could he fortify his mind to
cut the tie and give her up.

When the curtain rang down on the last act the door-man brought in his
card, and Marcia ran light-heartedly out to meet him.

"You see, I disobeyed you," he announced, and she sought to reply with
great severity, but delight broke through that affectation and riddled
it with smiles.

"Unless you are too tired," she suggested, "let's take a walk before we
go back to that desolate morgue they call a hotel."

It was a cold and sparkling night and the old street, which was once a
post road, twisted between the elms under a moon that threw the rambling
houses into softened shapes and underscored them duskily with shadow.
They had walked perhaps a half-mile when they came upon a building that
had in its more prosperous years been a mansion of some pretense and
dignity. It sat back in its generous yard, with a cheery