hat gives you a chance to say something pretty."

They crossed Yarnell Way. James, looking around upon the wrecks of
humanity they began to meet, was very sure that he did not enjoy this
excursion. An adventure with Miss Frome outside of the conventions was
the very thing he did not want. What in the world did the girl mean
anyhow? Her vagaries were beginning to disturb her relatives. So much he
had gathered from Valencia.

Before he had got as far as a protest Alice turned in to the entrance of
a building and climbed a flight of stairs. She pushed a button. A woman
of rather slatternly appearance came to the door.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Maloney. I've come to see how Mr. Marchant is."

The landlady brushed into place some flying strands of hair. "Well, now,
Miss Frome, he's better to-day. The nurse is with him. If you'll jist
knock at the door 'twill be all right."

While they were in the passage James interposed an objection. "My dear
Miss Frome, I really don't think--"

She interrupted brightly. "I'm glad you don't. You're not expected to,
you know. I'm commanding this expedition. Yours not to answer why. Yours
but to do and die." And she knocked on the door of the room at which
they had stopped.

It was opened by a nurse in uniform. James observed that she, too, like
Mrs. Maloney, brightened at sight of the visitor.

"Mr. Marchant will be pleased to see you, Miss Frome."

He was. His gladness illuminated the white face through the skin of
which the cheek bones appeared about to emerge. A thin blue-veined hand
shot forward to meet hers.

"Oh, comrade, but I'm glad to meet you."

"I think you know Mr. Farnum."

The man propped up in bed nodded a little grin at the lawyer. "We've
met. It was years ago in Jeff's rooms."

"Oh--er--yes. Yes, I remember."

Presently Jeff and Sam Miller dropped in to see the invalid. From chance
remarks the lawyer gathered that the little cobbler had brought himself
so low by giving his overcoat one bitter night to a poor girl he had
found shivering in the streets.

The frankness with which they discussed before Alice Frome things never
referred to in good society shocked James.

It appeared that the story of this little factory girl who had been led
astray was still urgent in Marchant's mind. At the time of their arrival
he had just finished scribbling some verses hot from his heart. Jeff
read them aloud, in spite of the poet's modest insistence that they were
only a fir